


The Story Formerly Known as "Trust the Instinct"

by Nyxelestia



Series: Abandoned or Hiatus [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Alpha Derek Hale, Assault, Attempted Murder, BAMF Allison Argent, Because They Are All Teenagers, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Soldiers, Drink Spiking, F/M, Full Shift Werewolves, Gaslighting, Gen, Geodesic Cast, Huntress Allison Argent, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kanima Jackson Whittemore, Kanima Venom, Kidnapping, M/M, Mass Murder, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mind Rape, Minor Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Murder, Panic Attacks, Poisoning, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Scott McCall is a Good Friend, Sex Jokes, Stabbing, Stiles Has Issues, Stiles Has Panic Attacks, Suicide, big cast, lots of characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6547852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxelestia/pseuds/Nyxelestia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strike>Season 2, but with consistent plot and character development.</strike>
</p>
<p>
  <strike>Scott and Derek don't like each other, their packs even less so. The last thing they want is to cooperate with each other. But between Gerard, the Kanima, and whoever its master is, they don't really have a choice.</strike>
</p>
<p>
  <strike>Scott tries to keep everyone alive. Stiles tries to keep his friends and family from dying. Allison tries not to wish she was dead. Jackson and Lydia are desperately not admitting they're losing their minds, Derek is a failure of an alpha, and his betas don't even notice because of how upside-down their worlds have become. Chris wants to know what's happening to his family, the Sheriff wants to know what's going on in this weird town, and Danny wants to know what it is that no one is telling him.</strike>
</p>
<p>
  <b><i>Trust The Instinct</i>, in its current form, has been discontinued. It has been adapted and merged with <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/312872">Winter Wolves</a>.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abomination & Venomous

**Author's Note:**

> The first few chapters are going to be kinda-crappy rewrites of individual scenes, assuming most everything else happened the same in canon. I'll start writing away from canon more drastically towards the end. This story starts around The Pool Scene of Season 2. :)
> 
> I'm writing in the style of the show, but with less fridging, and with something resembling plot consistency, worldbuilding, and reasonable character development. Basically, it's **how I wish the show had actually gone**.
> 
>  
> 
> ETA Feb. 5, 2017:
> 
>  
> 
> **Nyxie's Standard Shipping Statement:** This fic is focused primarily on family feels, and on friendship. It is not a shipping or ship-focused fic. The romantic/sexual relationships are only really for the purposes of telling various characters' stories - they are not a narrative focus in or of themselves.

Stiles could actually hear the distant sound of the larger crowd at the lacrosse field cheering, which meant they'd won. He would have liked to have been out there celebrating, or at least the opportunity to do a little victory dance while snooping around Gerard's office. Unfortunately-

“Ow, _ow_ , that’s my ear, I need that!”

Trying to keep a blank face as Erica dragged him down the hallway was pointless - it wasn't like Stiles didn't know she could at the very least hear his heartbeat. Depending on how instructive Derek's been for the last few weeks, she might even already know what panic smells like, and if Stiles could smell his own fear sweat, then she _definitely_ could.

He just didn't have it in him to let people see his fear.

Erica wasn't listening to him, anyway. He skittered a little, trying to keep up with her - seriously, she was almost as fast as Lydia in those heels - and held onto her wrist before she pulled his ear off his head completely.

He frowned as he smelled chlorine and realized where this hallway led. “Are you going to drown me?”

She snorted. “If I wanted to kill you, I could just slash your throat with my claws.”

“That is not comforting,” Stiles said as they rounded the corner to the pool. “Like not…at…all…”

Derek stood by the edge of the pool with a nasty smile on his face and a basketball bouncing from hand. Stiles was so caught on the incongruous image that he didn’t realize Erica had let go of his ear until she was standing right beside Derek.

“Wonderful,” Stiles muttered, looking between them while rubbing at his ear. The basketball's rhythm sounded smooth against the blood rushing in his head. “Something tells me you didn’t bring me here to go skinny dipping.”

Erica leered. She really enjoyed being the Hot Girl way too much.

The basketball stopped bouncing.

“What did you see at the mechanic’s garage?” Derek demanded, basketball caught between his palms.

Stiles’ hand throbbed as he remembered.

“Um, several alarming EPA violations that I’m seriously considering reporting,” Stiles said. He tried not to wipe his hand on his pants. Sweat wasn’t as slimy as that paralytic slime on the doorknob, but it was close enough for discomfort.

Derek gripped the basketball in both hands. “Don’t, Stiles. You need our help, you always-”

“Dude, you’re the one who once snuck into my bedroom and begged me for help!”

“Begged?” Derek asked. He raised an incredulous eyebrow while Erica looked at Derek in askance. She was probably going to ask Derek about it later. “I don’t recall any begging. In fact, I mostly remember how terrified you were." Derek stepped forward, smirking at how Stiles automatically stepped back. "I could hear your heartbeat. I could smell the fear on you.”

“And yet, you still put on a show with your shirt,” Stiles said, trying to smirk to match Erica. It probably looked stupid on him, but at least Erica’s expression promised a lot of awkward questions for Derek the next time they had their little pack meeting. “Or should I say, without it?”

Erica raised a bemused eyebrow.

Derek’s facial expression didn’t change at all as his claws pierced the basketball, deflating it into a lump of leather.

“Holy god…” Stiles muttered as one of the hardest things to ever hit his face in gym class collapsed like a soufflé under Derek’s grip. He couldn’t take his eyes off it as Derek threw it on the ground, but at least he didn’t flinch when it landed.

Barely.

“Let’s try that again,” Derek said.

Stiles glared down at the ball, then up at Derek.

“You know, after the last few months, that doesn’t actually scare me,” he lied.

The false amicability as Derek shrugged grated on Stiles’ nerves. “Okay. It doesn’t have to. You know what I can do. You were there when I killed Peter.”

“Yeah, after I set him on fire for you,” Stiles said. “And the Argents shot him half a dozen times.”

“You set someone on fire?” Erica asked. She sounded caught between disbelieving and impressed.

Stiles shrugged this time. “We had a self-igniting Molotov cocktail. Gift from Jackson, who learned how to make it from Lydia.”

Now Erica looked fully impressed, while Derek rolled his eyes. “That’s not the point, Stiles. Tell me: what did you see?”

“What makes you think his death was any of your business?” Stiles asked. “It could’ve been just an accident. Mechanics have to deal with a lot of dangerous and heaviy equipment and all that.”

Derek crossed his arms, feet spreading until they were shoulder width. Beside him, Erica also crossed her arms. That pushed her boobs up just that slightest amount, enough that Stiles knew it was absolutely intentional.

“Besides the fact he died on the last full moon? I heard what the police said,” Derek said, ignoring Stiles’ indignant _how?!_ “There was a lot of talk about how you were half-paralyzed on the ground when they got there.” Derek shifted his weight, leaning back like he didn’t have a care in the world. “They still can’t figure out what that toxin on your hand and the doorknob was.”

Derek took a step forward, then another. Stiles may have leaned back a bit, but he refused to actually step back again, unwilling to concede any ground to Derek.

“According to some conversations I...overheard..." Derek said. "Your father doesn’t believe that you didn’t see anything.” He uncrossed his arms and held his hands behind his back like a drill sergeant. “And neither do I.”

Stiles gripped the sides of his pants.

It was one thing to see the hesitation in Dad’s eyes, hear it in his voice, every time they talked at home. It was another thing entirely to be confronted with verbal confirmation that his dad thought Stiles was lying.

 _Knew_ Stiles was lying.

“I get why you wouldn’t have told him,” Derek continued. For a brief moment, his voice softened. “You want to protect him. That’s admirable. But the best way to keep him safe is if we get to whatever it was that killed the mechanic before the police do. They aren’t prepared to handle werewolves.”

One deep, shaky breath as he tried not to imagine his father going up against a werewolf and…

It wouldn’t end well. Not without wolfsbane bullets involved, and Stiles still didn’t know how to switch out the bullets in Dad’s gun without him finding out.

“It wasn’t a werewolf,” Stiles said, letting go of his pants and wiping his sweaty palms on them. “It was some kind of…reptile.”

That took both of the werewolves by surprise.

“A reptile?” Derek asked.

"Yup," Stiles said, popping the _p_ ever so slightly.

Both werewolves abruptly frowned.

Stiles continued. “It was pretty slick-looking."

Erica gasped, actually gasped, which was a bizarre reaction in Stiles' opinion.

"Dark scales, webbed hands…yellow-slitted eyes…” Both of them looked alarmed. “What, have you seen it?”

“Um…” Erica said, and Stiles narrowed his eyes at her.

She didn’t just look alarmed.

She was looking up.

“Did it have a tail?” Derek demanded, sounding as terrified as Erica looked.

Stiles pursed his lips.

“It’s behind me, isn’t it?”

Erica nodded, not looking at him. With a dejected sigh, Stiles muttered, “And to think, I always wanted to say that.”

Before Stiles could say anything, there was a demonic hissing sound that echoed throughout the pool room, emanating from above and behind Stiles.

He whipped around just in time to see a giant…lizard…thing land on the ground right in front of him. He sprinted back several steps to get behind the werewolves. Erica, aggressive and over-confident, threw herself at the thing - leaving herself ungrounded and wide open.

Stiles winced at the sound of her skull smacking against the concrete when the...thing...threw her against the wall. His eyes flickered between her, Derek, and the lizard thing, and when they went back to her, she dropped, completely unconscious.

He couldn’t help the one, tiny whimper as the lizard thing looked away from Erica to focus on them. He could admit in his own head that he may have ended up bawling like a baby had it not been for Derek shoving him in the chest and yelling, “Run!”

Stiles stumbled back, but before he could even turn around to make a break for it, the lizard thing leaped at them. Derek body-slammed it from underneath to turn it aside. Stiles nearly did as Derek said and ran...until he saw the back of Derek’s neck. A jagged cut was bleeding down his nape - and simmering with a sticky, clear substance.

Damnit.

Even as Stiles watched, Derek stumbled, paralysis already starting to set in.

"Lydia's going to kill me for this," Stiles muttered, and grabbed onto Derek's arm just as he started falling.

~*~

Scott could still see Gerard's back, walking away, as Mom made her way over to the car, checking something on her phone.

Swallowing down on every scream of pain clawing its way out of his throat, Scott bunched up his shirt over the stab wound, tying it in a knot, then zipped up his hoodie and prayed.

"You okay, sweetie?" Mom asked when she finally looked up from her phone. "You don't look so great."

That was probably the biggest understatement of his _life_.

Scott smiled shakily. "Yeah, I, uh - got nervous at the Argents and over-ate. Stomach hurts now." He thought about trying to drive like this and said, "I swerved twice on the way here, actually."

She immediately started coming around the car, making a shooing motion with her hand. "Then I'll drive."

"Mom-"

"Go," she ordered, pointing to the passenger seat, and Scott 'reluctantly' agreed, going around the back of the car and easing himself into the seat. "Wow, you really had it bad, huh?"

"...yeah..." Scott said. "It was, um, awkward."

"You sure it wasn't food-poisoning?" Mom asked, starting the car. She sounded like she considered it a legitimate possibility. "They are pretty overprotective of their daughter. Having her ex-boyfriend over..."

"Nah," Scott said, and then tried not to make any noise whatsoever when Mom suddenly braked for another car. "J-just. Me."

Mom hummed in agreement. Thank god she'd come off a double, and had to devote all her attention to driving - and didn't notice that Scott was in way more pain than a stomach-ache would warrant.

Oh, god, it hurt. It hurt so. Damn. Much. His vision was starting to black out just staring out the window, and every turn the car made had him biting his lip to keep from screaming in pain. He would've cried in relief when they finally pulled into the driveway at home, if it wouldn't have made Mom too suspicious.

Getting Mom not to pry into his stomachache was thankfully short work - she was exhausted after her double-shift. Once he convinced her that his problem was nothing a heating pad, personal time with a toilet, and a bit of sleep wouldn’t fix, she bid him goodnight and went to her room. Scott went into the bathroom, locked the door, and collapsed into the bathtub.

It took two tries to peel off his hoodie, especially since the blood had started to seep through. His hand was coated in it from literally holding himself together in the half hour since Gerard walked away from him. He didn’t even try with his shirt, instead fished out his phone and called Stiles.

“Hey, Scott, I’m kind of-”

“Need your help,” Scott gasped into the phone. He leaned his head back against the tiles, shutting his eyes at the pain and the feeling of blood dripping down his body. “ _Now_.”

“What-”

“Stabbed,” Scott said. “Gerard…stabbed me…”

“Oh, sh-”

Scott tried to curl up, then tried to stretch out. The least painful option involved contorting himself so his legs were half curled under him and he was slumped diagonally across the wall of the bathtub. He squirmed, listening to and not hearing Stiles’ voice on the phone, until he gasped as he found the least painful position possible.

“Scott?” Stiles said, sounding like he’d been saying it a lot. He sounded panicked, an all too familiar sound these days. “How bad are we talking?”

Scott whimpered into the phone.

“Oh, god,” Stiles said. “Maybe you should call an ambulance, your mom, someone-”

“N-no,” Scott said. “Can’t…explain it…can I?”

Stiles continued to curse as he moved around wherever he was. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, okay, just hold on.”

“Can’t…do…else…” Scott mumbled. “Mom’s home.”

Stiles cursed again. “Make it twenty. Just hold on for twenty minutes, okay?”

Scott hummed into the phone, and then a few moments later there was silence. He let go, hearing the phone clattering on the tile floor. He hoped it didn’t break.

Now that he no longer needed to do anything, he used both hands to clutch at his stomach, and tried to breathe as little as possible.

He may have done it too well and passed out, or maybe all the agony swallowed up his sense of time. Either way, it felt like someone was picking the lock of the bathroom door in both forever and no time at all. Stiles slipped in, eyes wide and terrified as he closed the door behind him.

“Dude!” he hissed, setting down a backpack on the toilet lid. “What the hell were you thinking-”

“Can’t…hospital…” Scott murmured, looking up at him. “Please,” he implored, the plea stretching out on a groan. He didn't even know what he was asking for, anymore.

Thankfully, Stiles did. With a frustrated and all-too-human growl, he tore open his bag as he said, “I’m going to have to cut your clothes off.”

Scott nodded weakly, his temple rubbing against the warming tiles. “Whatever, just…make it stop…please…”

Stiles pulled some kind of medical kit, and extracted a pair of surgical scissors from it. He knelt down by Scott, then asked one last time, “Are you sure you don’t want professional-”

“M'mom can’know!” Scott slurred out.

Stiles sighed, and started cutting away at Scott’s shirt, hissing as he revealed more and more of the blood and the wound.

“God, Scotty…” Stiles murmured. He pulled out a roll of paper-towels from his backpack, ripping off several sheets at once and wetting them in the sink before wiping down Scott. Unfortunately, while it wasn’t gushing anymore, it was still bleeding a lot.

Still, Scott stared at his best friend when he fished under the bathroom cabinet and came out with the spare box of tampons Mom always kept there.

“Seriously?” Scott asked with a jolt, only to groan and slump back when the movement tugged at the edges of his wound.

“These things were made to staunch blood,” Stiles snapped, unwrapping one. “They were meant for bullet wounds in World War One. Then nurses in the military hospitals noticed how useful they were for periods.”

Scott rolled his eyes, but didn’t object when Stiles pushed a tampon out of its applicator and into the wound. He would probably be grossed out by it tomorrow morning, but right now he could not care less beyond the fact it hurt.

But even he could see the usefulness. He wasn’t spilling more blood across his skin as Stiles was still cleaning it up.

Confident that Stiles knew what he was doing - or close enough - Scott leaned his head back and closed his eyes in exhaustion as Stiles wiped him down.

“So Gerard knows you’re a werewolf?” Stiles asked finally.

“Yeah…” Scott swallowed, remembering the entire encounter. It was only a few minutes, but it still shook him to his core. Gerard had been friendly and even intimate as he stuck a knife in Scott's gut and literally twisted it. “Said he could feel me healing around the knife…when he was holding it.” He shuddered. "He looked like he enjoyed it."

Stiles grimaced, turning to pull a plastic bottle from the backpack. “That is creepy and wrong on so many levels. God, Scott - how are you even alive? What did he want?”

Scott winced as the overwhelming scent of rubbing alcohol hit him as soon as Stiles unscrewed the bottle cap. But it was alcohol and something else, something faintly herbal Scott always smelled when Deaton treated him. It was never used on any other animals. Looking over, Scott realized it was a bottle he'd actually seen at Deaton's office. Stiles must've stolen it.

He watched as Stiles folded up one of the paper towels and doused it with the supernaturally treated disinfectant.

“Said I…said he needed a…” Scott hissed at the first dab of Stiles’ impromptu disinfectant wipe. “Do him a…” Another pained hiss. “Favor or he’d…hurt m-mom.”

Stiles paused, looking as scared as Scott felt, but shook himself out of it in an instant. Scott only watched as Stiles fished around his bag until he could pull out a needle and thread. He also started tapping at his phone. Scott shut his eyes as he realized Stiles was looking up how to stitch someone up.

Jesus. Out of all the things to do off of an online tutorial, this had to be one of their worst ideas yet. But even Scott could see they didn't have any better options.

He turned and bit his own hand as the needle first went into his skin, Stiles muttering hasty apologies as he worked. Scott whimpered when Stiles pulled out the tampon, already blood-soaked, and wiped the wound down with Deaton's antiseptic. He winced as he felt something like a needle enter his skin.

Stile was literally stitching him up. In his bathtub. God, Deaton was going to be pissed if - when - Scott asked him to check the wound tomorrow.

“Did he say what the favor would be?” Stiles asked, trying to distract Scott from the pain.

Scott shook his head, letting go of his bite on his hand.

"He..." he took a medium breath - any deeper and he hurt the wound. "He smelled so weird."

"Weird, how?" Stiles asked, voice low and even. Calming. "C'mon, Scott, keep talking to me."

Scott swallowed, looking away from where Stiles was stitching him up. "Sick," he mumbled. "It's - I've smelled it before. On some of the animals. And around the hospital. He's really, really sick...and not just in the head."

Stiles laughed with no humor whatsoever, entire upper body bent over the edge of the tub and Scott's stomach. "That doesn't exactly help us much."

Staring at the top of Stiles' head, Scott said, "Actually, I think it does."

"How?" Stiles asked. He turned his attention away from the immediate wound to poke at a gash running from Scott's right pec, over his sternum, and down his left side. "And why isn't _this_ one healing?"

"Wounds inflicted by Alphas heal differently," Scott recited."Especially if it's...Intent...like with a Bite. And new Alphas...want to make pack...have a lot of Intent. Lasts for months. Don't always remember to hold back...hard to hold back...'s what Deaton said..."

This time, there was a trace of dark humor when Stiles laughed. "Okay, so how does Gerard being sick help us in any way?"

Scott frowned in thought. "Have to see...what his favor is...but - he's weak. Somehow." He swallowed, and remembered the first time he learned about the Hippocratic Oath. "Can use that against him. Hopefully."

Stiles was quiet, and it made Scott nervous - despite seeing how much Stiles was trying to concentrate on what he was doing. Stiles processed by talking through ideas and conclusions, ripping them apart outloud even when his brain was miles ahead of whatever he was actually saying.

A quiet Stiles scared him.

"Even if he's sick," Stiles said, voice flat in the way it only got when Stiles was trying to hide his actual feelings. What was he trying to hide from Scott? "He was still strong enough to cut a werewolf in half with a sword."

...terror.

Stiles _would_ try to hide his fear. He always tried, and never quite succeeded.

"I know," Scott said. He flexed his fingers, brushing against Stiles' hands where they pressed the gaping hole in his stomach that Stiles was still trying to close. "Believe me. He was strong. Is. I know." It was hard to get out full sentences between the feeling of _air on his internal organs oh god_ and Stiles sewing his body back together. Scott could barely think through the pain. "But...h'has...the advantage. I need one, too."

"We!" Stiles snapped, tugging on the thread. " _We_ need an advantage."

Scott bit his lip and jerked his head in what he hoped Stiles understood was a nod. "And this might be it."

Stiles snorted, and sat back on his heels. Scott blinked, and looked down to see that Stiles was done. He inched his fingertips closer, inspecting the stitching carefully.

"This is good," he said as Stiles cleaned up his supplies. "Really good. Deaton'll be proud."

"He should be able to take them out for you by tomorrow," Stiles said, frowning and inspecting the wound. "It should be gone completely in a few days, maybe a week tops. Right?"

"Everything goes away eventually," Scott said. "Even the stuff from before," he added, quiet and bitter. The bite scars he got from Roxy had disappeared within days of the Bite he got from Peter, and Scott...kind of missed them, despite all the bad memories they brought up. On the plus side, though, the scar from his 'fall' down the stairs was also gone.

"Right," Stiles said, shoving everything into his backpack. "Can't do anything about those. You need anything else, though? Because I gotta get back home before my dad notices I'm gone."

Scott winced and sat up as carefully as possible. "Grab some pajamas? For me? I need to shower. Wash off the blood."

Stiles nodded, slinking out the door as Scott made his way to his feet. He kept a tight grip on the handle of the glass door of the shower, wincing at the bloody handprints all over it. And the bloody clothes on the tile floor by the toilet. And the blood in the tub.

At least there was no blood on the bathmat. That would've been hard to clean up. As it was, Scott had to remember to replace the towels, because those had some drops of blood, too.

"Here," Stiles said, slipping back in to set some clothes on the counter by the sink. "Anything else?"

Scott shook his head. "Thank you. So much, for this, for all of this-"

"Don't worry about it," Stiles said, smiling softly and gripping Scott's shoulder. "You're my brother in every way that counts, I'll always help you. I'd even hug you, except right now you're covered in blood so let's not."

Scott smiled, experimenting with letting go of his side as Stiles shouldered his backpack and opened the door. Stiles was about to step out, before pausing and looking back at Scott.

"Hey," he said, voice soft and smile encouraging. "We'll figure this out. Promise."

Slumping against the tiled wall in relief, Scott nodded. "Thank you."

Rather than answering, Stiles saluted jauntily with two fingers, then left, locking and closing the door behind him.

With a sigh, Scott turned his attention back to his most immediate problem: how to get these pants off so he could take a shower.

It was the only problem he had the energy to worry about, right now.

~*~

Allison didn't have enhanced hearing of any kind, but she didn't need it to know that most of the school called her _that arsonist's niece_. She heard the usual lull in conversation that followed her everywhere these days as she walked into the chemistry room, and instead scanned the room until she found Scott and Stiles waiting for her. Stiles even moved over to the end so she could sit between them, next to Scott.

As soon as she did, he leaned against her.

"...how's the stomach?" she asked quietly. She looked down, half expecting to see blood-spots on his shirt. Of course, there was nothing.

"It's fine," Scott murmured, nuzzling his temple against her shoulder for a moment before sitting up. "Stomach's a little achy, but otherwise I'm fine."

She swallowed around the lump in her throat, the one that's been lodged there ever since Stiles called her and told her what Gerard did.

"Scott," she said, and both boys looked sharply at her. "I'm so sorry-"

"Don't be," Scott said, reaching over and squeezing her hand in his. "It's not your fault. You had nothing to do with it and didn't even know about it until Stiles told you about it."

"I still feel responsible," she said quietly. "I mean - I was able to save Isaac but I can't save you?"

"Hey," Scott said with a reassuring smile. "I'm alive, and I'm okay." He leaned over to kiss her cheek. "You save me every day-"

She was about to respond, but the bell rang just as Mr. Harris stood up.

Tuning out his ridiculous speech about human stupidity, Allison turned in her seat to see Lydia already preparing her chemistry notes...and Erica and Isaac smiling coyly at her from their own table just two rows away.

And then she heard that they weren't going to have the same partners for the day - that they would be rotating.

Damnit.

At Mr. Harris' orders for half the class to get up, Scott smiled at her with his puppy-positive grin, and gave her hand one more reasssuring squeeze before joining the other standing students to be reassigned a starting desk.

Even without werewolf powers, she sensed Scott's discomfort as he sat next to Erica. Of course, it was unfortunately easy to figure out the source of the discomfort, too.

Not many girls got the validation of watching their boyfriends get pissed off by the hottest girl in the school trying to feel them up. For all that he was a teenage boy, Scott was a romantic at heart. He couldn't seem to get into anything without some semblance of a relationship involved.

Even his favorite porn was sappy and romantic.

Allison smiled when the bell dinged and Erica wasn't remotely successful in duping Scott to her side. That smile dropped when, instead of going to another seat, Erica moved back to take the stool next to Allison.

Of course.

Flipping her hair over her shoulder, the werewolf ignored Allison as she started filling out the worksheet.

Allison tried to focus. This step was all math, figuring out the formulas for the next step. Except Erica was not just ignoring her, but pointedly ignoring her.

Finally, Allison couldn't stand it any more. Setting down her pen, she turned in her seat to face the werewolf.

"What are you going to do to her?" she asked, tilting her head towards Lydia.

"Don't you think the better question is," Erica drawled, looking at Allison sidelong. "What's she going to do to us?"

Allison glared, turning to look at Lydia, just to check...

It wasn't likely that Isaac would do anything to her while they were actually in the lab, in school, in public. Allison couldn't help worrying, anyway.

Lydia saw Allison, glanced at Erica, and rolled her eyes. Allison smiled. As far as Lydia knew, Erica annoyed Allison due to something Scott-related, nothing more sinister.

If only.

"I have to say," Erica said, and Allison turned back to see Erica smirking at the back of Scott's head. "You guys are cute together."

Allison snorted, shaking her head. "You think you can hurt me by sliding your hand up his thigh?" she challenged, maintaining her calm as best as possible. An emotional Hunter was a dead Hunter.

"Oh, I don't know," Erica said, turning on her stool to face Allison. "The thing about jealousy is that it's never really rational."

"The fact that you think this is about being jealousy is why I'm _not_ jealous," Allison said. "I don't need a boyfriend to validate me. I'm better with Scott, but I'm still worth something without him."

The _'unlike you'_ hung unspoken between them.

Disappointingly, Erica didn't fall for it. Instead, she grinned, the wolf showing in every inch of her smile as her hand dropped to-

"Would you rather it was your thigh?" she said, trailing her fingers up from Allison's knee towards her skirt just like Scott did. Allison froze, staring at Erica with shocked-wide eyes and fighting hard not to look down. "C'mon, girlfight in the lab? It'll be hot."

Allison sneered, latching onto Erica's wrist. She twisted it back, just like Aunt Kate once showed her. She said, low and serene, "You wouldn't be able to handle me."

"Oh, I would love to find out," Erica challenged, wincing in Allison's grip but never dropping her smile. "Think your boyfriend would enjoy the show?"

"You mean the one where I beat you into the ground with your fancy new shoes?" Allison asked with mock-innocence. Then, micmicing Erica's tone, she said, "Oh, I would love to find out."

From the desk in front of them, Scott snorted, and Allison grinned.

Erica rolled her eyes, and twisted her hand right out of Allison's grip. "So you like it rough, then?"

"Not from you," Allison drawled, still copying Erica's cadence.

Slowly, Erica smiled again, and Allison tried to analyze her words to figure out what kind of opening she just gave Erica.

Before she could hear it, though, the seat-change bell rang again.

Erica grinned, and with her new, lupine reflexes, she reached out and squeezed Allison's thigh again - this time with her fingers ending in claws.

"Oh, but I would really love to get rough with you," she said, and was out of her seat before Allison could rebuke.

She was still staring incredulously when Scott took the seat next to her.

"You know I won't ever actually leave you, right?" he told her.

Allison swallowed, then put on a smirk, blatantly looking over her shoulder in Erica's general direction, though not quite at her. Not yet.

"You didn't leave me even after you had Lydia throwing herself at you on a full moon," she said, matter-of-fact and casual. "Of course I know you won't leave me just for Erica."

 _Just_. Erica frowned, clearly irritated.

Scott smiled in relief, glancing at Harris and leaning over to kiss her cheek as soon as the teacher turned away. "I'm sorry about that, by the way. I don't think I ever actually apologized."

"I forgive you," Allison promised. "I forgave you for that ages ago."

Smiling, he said, "God, I love you."

"I love you too," Allison said with a smile, then pointed at the beaker in front of him. "Now pour out half the solution, slowly."

Scott turned his attention to their work, and Allison turned to look at Erica head on.

 _'What now, bitch?'_ she mouthed across the room. Erica...rolled her eyes. Huh.

Allison kept her face blank as she turned her own attention back to the chemistry assignment.

A few minutes later, the seat-change bell rang, and Scott pressed one more soft kiss to her cheek as he got up to go sit next to Lydia.

She smiled at him, only for her smile to fall when Isaac sat down next to her.

For a few minutes, they worked in silence. Allison mixed the tinctures while Isaac wrote down the measurements.

"If you guys hurt Lydia," Allison said conversationally. "I will bring my entire Hunter's clan down on you so hard your Alpha will feel it."

Isaac didn't look up from the worksheet. "Don't get pissy with us because we're doing your job for you," he said, far more haughty than he had any right to be. "You know, protecting the innocents and all that."

"Lydia _is_ innocent," Allison said.

Isaac snorted. "She's been killing people all over town. And even if she hasn't, it wasn't like she was a good person to begin with."

"...excuse you?!" Allison hissed, actually setting down her pippette to glare.

Now, now he looked up.

"I asked her out once, in freshman year," Isaac said, finally turning his head to look at her. "She said no, and told me to come back when the bike I rode to school had an engine, and not a chain."

Allison stared.

Isaac smirked.

"Lydia's cold-blooded," he said, as if it had any relation to his previous sentence. "With or without the kanima."

Allison clenched her fists, and wondered how much trouble she would get in if she stabbed him in the balls here and now. She could do it. It would be so easy-

"So really, one way or another," Isaac continued. "We're doing the whole town a favor by killing her."

"Don't even try it," she practically growled. "You don't care about protecting anyone. You were just a pathetic little asshole, and now you're mad that the Bite didn't make you any better and you're taking it out on her."

"She's killing people!" Isaac hissed back, dropping the smarmy act to glare at her. "Isn't it supposed to be your job to stop monsters from killing people? Or do you only kill werewolves, screw whether or not they've hurt anyone, and screw everyone else?"

"You aren't innocent, and it has nothing to do with being a werewolf, and everything to do with being a misogynist," Allison snapped. She kept her voice low and tried to mirror her mother's calm but terrifying tone she used to cow her dad's business rivals.

She probably used to intimidate werewolves, too.

Isaac didn't look intimidated - but he did look confused. "What?"

"You're just like every other guy who thinks that if they like a girl, they're entitled to her," Allison snapped in an undertone. A few classmates were eyeing her and Isaac warily, seeing their faces but not hearing their conversation. "As if we're all so desperate for a boyfriend that we should be grateful for the barest hint of male attention and drop our panties for the first dick that gets interested in us."

From behind Isaac, one row over, Scott grinned, proud and amused in equal measures.

Disturbingly enough, though, at the desk behind Scott, Erica also looked impressed. Allison ignored her.

"Well I have news for you," she continued, crossing her arms and ignoring their chemistry work completely. "Lydia doesn't owe you a damn thing just because you liked her. There are plenty of psychopaths in the world who kill women who reject them. Don't use the kanima to justify acting just like them."

Isaac's jaw clenched as he turned back to their chemistry work. After a moment, Allison did the same, making a note on the sheet that was supposed to stay with the table instead of the person.

"It doesn't matter what I think," Isaac said finally. "If Lydia kills someone after you could've stopped her, it's as much on you as it is on her."

Allison froze, pencil standing on the paper mid-word and mind reeling with déjà vu.

Her parents said almost exactly the same thing.

Swallowing, finished her section of the worksheet, her hands shaking so much that the handwriting was barely legible.

Mom and Dad told her a lot of things - and taught her a lot of things.

And long before that, Aunt Kate had taught her plenty, too. Looking back, so much of her bonding activities with her aunt were now obviously training in disguise. All their hiking, rock climbing, sparring, gymnastics, archery, shooting...but some things were less obvious.

In retrospect, the amount her aunt taught her to manipulate people...

She always disguised it as advice on how to make friends, how to flirt, how to do business - but so much of it was coming in handy with Hunting, Allison couldn't believe it was a coincidence.

The bell to change seats dinged, Isaac smirked, and somewhere on memory lane, Allison snapped.

"Regardless of whether or not she's the kanima," Allison said, voice as icy as possible as she shut her notebook. "You don't get to use 'protecting people' as justification. The only reason you want to kill her is because deep down, you are just as much of an abusive, entitled, and psychopathic asshole as your father."

Isaac paled, and behind him, Erica's gaze turned from reluctantly impressed to bluntly murderous, while Scott's eyes widened in shock.

"I'm not..." Isaac protested.

"No?" she asked sweetly. "I'm sure that's what your dad told himself, too."

He looked like he was about to cry as he stumbled to the next desk in his rotation. Erica bared her teeth at Allison in fury as she took her seat next to Isaac, the rage melting away as she turned to the boy and started murmuring low in his ear.

Whatever Erica was saying, Isaac either didn't hear her or didn't believe her.

"What was that about?"

Allison turned to Stiles as he slid into the seat next to her.

"I just made him face some hard truths," she said, opening her notebook again. "About how being a werewolf didn't make him a better person."

Stiles snorted as he tugged at the worksheet and compared it to the actual chemistry process. "It seems to make everyone into an asshole, honestly, even Scott." He paused, then murmured over his shoulder, "Sorry, Scott."

A moment later, a text chimed on Stiles' phone. _No worries,_ it read, and Allison smiled.

"I talked to Jackson," she added. "I just asked him where he was at certain days and times...he said he's been having migraines."

"Huh," Stiles said, glancing over his shoulder before turning the pages of his notebook to a blank sheet. "Scott eavesdropped a bit in the locker-room, apparently he mentioned migraines to Coach once, so I guess it's true. Damnit. Would've been easy if it were just him."

In his notebook, Stiles wrote by hand, _Did either of them say anything to you?_

Stiles turned his attention to the chemistry project, squinting at the little lines on the beaker and writing down the measurement. Allison took the notebook and wrote with her own pen, _Just that they think it's Lydia._

When he finished with his part of the mixture and read her response, Stiles pursed his lips. _I'll turn them into fur coats if they hurt her._

Allison grinned, and wrote, _Well, her birthday IS coming up, soon._ Stiles snickered as Allison filled out another section of the worksheet.

 _We can make it a joint birthday present,_ he wrote, and Allison had to cover her mouth lest she laugh too hard.

 _She deserves something nice,_ she wrote.

Stiles' face, oddly, fell as he read that. Then slowly, he nodded, and wrote at the bottom of the page, _Especially since this is our fault._

Allison swallowed, turning the page so they could keep chatting without the other werewolves overhearing them.

_You really think so?_

_I know so._

She took a deep breath, centering herself as Stiles double-checked their work on the chemistry packet.

"We have to protect her," Allison murmured quietly.

Stiles nodded, not looking up from the packet. "We will."

Allison huffed in weariness, just as the bell dinged again.

"Werewolves," she grumbled.

Stiles nodded. "Werewolves," he agreed.

They shared a look, then looked over their shoulder and murmured in unison, "Sorry, Scott."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Preview of the Next Chapter:**
> 
> _“Wouldn’t she just burn down the school, then?” Anna asked._
> 
> _“Shoot us up, burn us down, we’d all still be dead if Allison goes off the deep end like her aunt.”_
> 
> _“She wouldn’t burn us down, not with her mom and grandpa here.”_
> 
> _“Let’s hope.”_
> 
> _Swallowing, Allison dropped her feet, and could see the slight jerks and then sudden stiffness in the girls’ feet and shins before she stood up. With a deep breath, she shouldered her bag and stepped out of the stall._


	2. 206 - Frenemy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have THINGS I'm supposed to be doing.

The lights of the police cars and the Jungle felt almost blinding as Stiles' fumbled for his keys. His hands were shaking as he turned the key in the ignition and shifted the gears, and the only barely stilled when he grasped the wheel in a white-knuckled grip. Scott dropped back into his seat after he was sure that Jackson was unconscious.

The unholy combination of adrenaline and fear was already washing through Stiles' brain as his heart pounded in his ears, breath coming in way too quick to be good for him. Still, with Scott griping his shoulder in reassurance, he was able to weave his way between cars and get them out of there. Barely anyone noticed the jeep, let alone looked inside it long enough to realize there was someone lying down in the backseat. It wasn't long before the lights were specks in Stiles' rearview mirrors.

Stiles was still counting in a self-soothing formula in his head when Scott asked, “Did you mean it?”

Stiles frowned at the road. “Mean what?”

“That you could be gay.”

Stiles blew out a breath. “Well, I’m pretty sure Lydia Martin is a girl.”

“Bi, then,” Scott said.

Scott kept his eyes on the road, only looking away to glance at Jackson’s unconscious form in the rearview mirror.

“Maybe,” Stiles said finally. “I mean - I don’t know? I’ve kind of had tunnel vision for Lydia for so long…” He paused. “I mean, I’ve never really checked anyone out in the locker room or anything.”

“Neither has Danny,” Scott pointed out.

For a few blocks, they drove in silence, then Scott said, “You know I won’t care either way, right?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, rolling his eyes without taking them off the road. Of course he knew. This was the twenty-first century, why would Scott care?

They went another two blocks, heading towards the edge of town, before Scott said, “So-o-o…”

“‘So’ what?”

“…am I attractive to gay guys?” Scott asked, and Stiles laughed. “What?” Scott whined.

“Dude, someone just sent you a drink in a gay club!” Stiles said indignantly. “Even when you were standing right next to the awesomeness that is me.”

Scott laughed a little, too. For just a moment, it was like any other drive home after a nice night out, back when life was simple, and their only problems were school and lacrosse and girls.

Then the pained groan from the backseat reminded him life wasn’t like that anymore.

“What are we going to do about him?” Stiles asked.

“I don’t know,” Scott said. “But we have to get him somewhere strong, because I can’t contain the kanima on my own.” He paused. “The only place I can think of are our basements, but if our parents come home…and what if we need to move him? Your jeep won’t hold him if the kanima tries to get out.”

Stiles gripped the steering wheel as he thought it through. They needed a place to hold him, and possibly a mobile place. “No, it won’t - but I think I know something that might.”

He made a sharp right turn at the next block, then another, going back in the direction they came.

“Where are we going?” Scott asked.

Stiles pursed his lips. “Police station.”

~*~

The next day, Allison could still feel Gerard’s cold, papery fingers on her neck as she left Mom's classroom. She knew she looked terrible, but she barely kept herself from crying as it was. She couldn’t be bothered to pull on the mask of polite disinterest she’d been wearing ever since the whole town found out what her aunt did.

As soon as she cleared the administrative hall, she all-but-ran to the nearest girls' bathroom. Muttering hasty apologies as she went, she cut through a pair of girls and into the empty bathroom, shouldering her way into the stall and locking it behind her. Dropping onto the toilet seat, she snatched up a bunch of toilet paper and pressed it to her face when she couldn’t hold back the sobbing any more.

God, first Kate, then Gerard, now Mom. And she didn’t even know what to think about Dad, these days.

Her entire family was working to kill her best friends - her only friends, now.

Scooting back on the toilet seat, she brought her knees up to bury her face in them, trying to breathe in the way Mom taught her. Intro to How to Stop Crying and Hide Your Feelings 101, that had been a weird week, but one which Allison was now grateful for. She probably would have been grateful for it then, too, if she hadn’t still been reeling from watching a werewolf slash Aunt Kate’s neck open.

And from finding out Aunt Kate was a psychopath.

And that werewolves existed.

And that her boyfriend was one of them.

She hiccupped once, held her breath, and then kept breathing deep and controlled to bring down her heartrate. Her bag dug into her gut, but she kept breathing with her entire torso. Just like Mom taught her.

"Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent," she murmured into her knees. Allison kept saying it to herself - a mantra which her entire family swore by to manage their feelings.

Werewolves could smell feelings. One always had to remain calm in the field, and however morbid the motto was, it was at least useful in giving her something to say, something to focus on, over and over and over again.

_We hunt those who hunt us._ Except she didn’t even know for sure who was hunting her, so who was she supposed to hunt?

Still, at least her breathing was calm. She was just deciding whether she actually needed to use the bathroom when she heard the main door open.

“Is she still in here?” one girl asked. Allison tried to remember her name. Harley? Haley?

“Looks empty,” another girl said, one whose name was definitely Anna. At least Allison assumed it was her, given that’s who Harley was usually around.

“Guess she’s gone,” Harley said, sounding oddly…relieved.

Allison didn’t blame her.

“Wonder what she was crying about?” Anna asked.

“The more important question is what she’ll do about whatever it was that upset her in the first place,” Harley said. The two girls stopped just past the sink, in front of the mirrors. In here to fix their make-up and chat, then.

The new make-up Allison had probably wouldn't be smudged much, if at all. It would be enough for her to get through the day, let her catch up with Scott and Stiles to let them know about Jackson's family. It would be the only way for the boys to know without her own family being alerted by a suspiciously-timed call on her phone.

“What do you mean?” she heard.

“I mean, is she going to end up like one of those crazy school shooters?” Harley asked, and Allison froze, eyes locked onto the coat-hook on the door of her stall as Harley's question echoed through the whole bathroom.

Were they talking about her?

“You really think so?”

“Maybe, I mean - what if she follows in her aunt’s footsteps or whatever?”

They were.

Oh, god.

Allison knew it was bad. She couldn't miss the weird looks or how no one wanted to talk to her these days. And the stuff people said about her family...

It had been assuaged lately with her grandpa and mom taking jobs at the school for free to make up for some understaffing and budget cuts. There were statements about trying to make it up to the community all over the town newspaper and the school’s website. Familial penance to make up for their family member's heinous actions.

Of course, those usually had little impact on students’ opinions of each other.

But to think she would start killing her classmates, her friends-

Well.

Her family was already trying to make her do exactly that.

“Wouldn’t she just burn down the school, then?” Anna asked.

“Shoot us up, burn us down, we’d all still be dead if Allison goes off the deep end like her aunt.”

“She wouldn’t burn us down, not with her mom and grandpa here.”

“Let’s hope.”

Swallowing, Allison dropped her feet, and could see the slight jerks and then sudden stiffness in the girls’ feet and shins before she stood up. With a deep breath, she shouldered her bag and stepped out of the stall.

It was, indeed, Harley and Anna. They were both frozen, holding make-up halfway to their faces with their cosmetic bags on the little shelf in front of the mirror. Both of them stared at her with wide eyes, hands trembling in mid-air.

Allison’s make-up was mostly still in place. Lydia wasn't kidding about it being "everything but actual remover"-proof.

She only had to use the little smudger on the back end of her eyeliner to clean up and redo the line, and a bit of foundation touch-up. Her eyes were still a little puffy, but it would take a lot more time than Allison was willing to devote to fix that. Satisfied, she turned sharply on her toes to leave - the other two girls still frozen in shock.

And the barest hint of fear.

Let them be scared. At least Allison wouldn’t be alone.

As she trotted through the halls, she got several more odd looks, especially at her eyes, but no one stopped to talk to her or ask if she was okay.

Of course not. She was Kate Argent’s niece. If anything was wrong, they didn’t want to know. Fortunately, that was exactly what Allison needed, right now.

At least, if her family asked about her odd behavior for the last half of the school day, she now had a fantastic excuse they couldn't even try to do anything about.

They were the ones who taught her that the best lies came from a grain of truth.

~*~

“What if I told you I could get your fake ID back?”

Danny frowned at his wallet, not looking up at Scott.

But not because he was actually considering the offer - just considering all the weirdness that's been going around, and was likely to start wrapping around him if he helped Scott.

Things have already been weird ever since he helped Stiles.

Part of Danny wanted to tell Scott _no_. Just go back to his daily - and nightly - life and not worry about whatever the hell was going on at his school and in this town.

The rest of him wanted answers.

In the mild chill of the hospital room, Danny looked speculatively at Scott. He glanced between the boy and his wallet as he weighed the cost of Jackson finding out he said anything...against the cost of a new ID.

“…he’s sleeping,” Danny finally said, voice quite in latent shame. No one liked being the tattle-tale.

Scott frowned. “What?”

“It’s just a video of him sleeping,” Danny said, folding the wallet and putting it in his back pocket. “He moves and twists around on the bed a lot, and that’s about it. Video just cuts out eventually, close to morning.”

Scott frowned at the bed, like what Danny said made no sense. Fair enough - it didn’t make much sense to Danny, either, except…well. He only had to tell Scott what was on the video - he didn’t need to add his own opinion on what might have really been happening or what it meant.

"But," Danny continued. "A couple hours of the video is missing."

"Missing?"

"Part of it was deleted."

Scott sucked in a breath, and bracing himself against the bed railing, he seemed to sink deep into thought.

“I hope that helped,” Danny added.

“I think it will,” Scott said absently. He shook his head and tapped his hands against the foot-rail of the hospital bed one more time.

"...do you know what happened, last night?" Danny asked. "Or at least who it was that drugged us all?"

"No," Scott admitted, looking away. Was that because he was lying, or he just didn't want to admit it was the truth? "It's all just...weird."

Danny snorted. "You're telling me." Scott looked at him in askance, and Danny elaborated, "One serial killer shows up in town, dies, and then immediately another one takes her place?" He shook his head. "Something else is going on, something big." He sighed. "On the bright side, it made getting my parents to pay for more MMA sessions easier. Though now they'll probably think it was wasted or something since I still ended up in the hospital."

"I thought you were already some kind of black belt champion or something?" Scott asked.

Danny rolled his eyes. "That's karate, not mixed martial arts. Besides, I don't do tournaments - I'm not interested."

Scott frowned. "Then why do it at all?"

This time, Danny smirked. "You notice how no one _ever_ gives me crap about being gay?"

Scott slowly nodded.

"Only half of that is because of Jackson," Danny said. "The other half is all me. That's what most of those fights we got into with everyone else in middle school were about."

Scott smiled, slightly. "Well, at least you're safe from the serial killers, then."

"As long as they don't have drugs," Danny said dryly. Then he looked around the hospital room, and sighed. "You really don't know what happened?"

Scott swallowed again, and this definitely meant he was lying earlier. "We're still trying to figure things out."

"Who's 'we'?" Danny asked.

The look Scott gave the bed spread was surprisingly forlorn, especially coming from a guy Danny hadn't seen frown since the third grade.

"I'm not even sure, anymore," Scott said softly, looking away.

Then, he gave Danny one of the most forced smiles he’d ever seen in his life.

And he was friends with _Jackson_ , so that was really saying something.

“Thank you, by the way," Scott said with utmost sincerity. "For telling me about the video. You may have just saved a life."

Danny stared, confused.

He wanted to ask what that meant, but Scott was already gone from the room.

For a few minutes, he stared out the door incredulously.

What the hell was going on? He rubbed at the back of his neck, before wincing at the cuts still there from the…whatever it was that happened last night. Someone on drugs, definitely. And getting it into the air somehow, from the looks of it, given the number of people hallucinating a giant lizard on the dance floor.

Maybe someone had a weird costume or something, though that just begged a lot of its own questions, too.

“First 'Miguel', now this,” Danny muttered to himself, shaking his head. With a forlorn sigh, he finished getting dressed and checking his phone.

He didn’t know what the hell has been going on with Jackson, lately, but after something like this, he was going to find out.

And to do that, he was probably going to have to violate his court order.

Again.

~*~

Jackson shivered in the cold metal box he was trapped in. They didn't even give him a _shirt_. It was already bad enough that they'd apparently seen him naked, since he didn't have boxers on and these were definitely not his sweatpants. But if they were going to trap him in a metal box in the cold outdoors, the least the bastards could do was give him a shirt.

He focused on that. On the cold, on the clothes, on the faint precursors to hunger he could feel building in his gut.

He focused on them so hard, he could almost, _almost_ , forget that he was trapped here by three crazy people who wanted to do who-knew-what with him. They wanted him for something, and Jackson wasn't so sure about his own chances against them. McCall was a werewolf faster and stronger than a human like Jackson could hope to be, Allison came from a family of professional killers, and Stilinski was capable of setting a living thing on fire, and watching it burn without flinching.

Wrapping his arms around himself, he frowned as he heard their voices - quiet, getting louder...but only their voices. There was no sound of them actually moving closer to the van.

_“...so, somebody just watches Jackson make a video of himself turning into the kanima, and then just erases part of it so he wouldn’t know?”_

Jackson frowned at the silvery wall he was facing. How was he even hearing this? Stilinski and McCall and Allison had walked off, he heard them. __

“Who would do that?”

He would like to know, too-

_“Somebody who wanted to protect him?”_

-except he wasn’t this kanima thing and right now he had bigger problems. Like getting kidnapped.

_“…said it only goes after murderers. What if that’s actually true?”_

But the fact that McCall could casually chat about murderers explained what exactly their priorities were.

And as much as Jackson hated to admit it, he wasn’t even sure he could blame them. If he had their weird savior complexes, he’d probably kidnap someone to track down a murderer, too.

Except Jackson wasn’t the murderer and he didn’t know who was, so this whole damn thing was still messed up.

He did, however, snort to himself when Stilinski said, _“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t murdered anyone, lately.”_

"What about Peter?" he grumbled.

Outside, McCall gasped.

_"What?"_ Allison demanded.

For a few moments, nothing. Maybe facial expressions?

_"Jackson can hear us,"_ McCall said, then raised his voice. _"And he just mentioned a good point - what about Peter?"_

_"I didn't murder him!"_ Stilinski snapped, while suddenly he sounded like he was stomping closer and closer.

"He helped, that makes him an accessory to murder," Jackson said into the empty air of the prisoner transport van, as two more sets of footsteps followed the first one.

_"Jackson says you'd be an accessory to murder since you helped,"_ McCall said, just as the doors swung open again. Stilinski stood there, one hand on each door as he leaned his weight inward while he glared at Jackson.

"So did you," Stilinski snapped, as McCall and Allison appeared behind him. "What does that make you?"

"A, not a kanima!" Jackson snapped. "And B, I didn't even do anything, I just brought that Molotov cocktail-"

"Which would be felony arson," Stilinski countered, letting go of the doors to cross his arms. "Besides, Derek was defending himself when he killed Peter."

"Oh, please," Jackson sneered. "Derek needed to kill Peter to be an alpha. If that's not _malice aforethought_ , I don't know what is."

"It wasn't premeditated," Stilinski snapped. "We all just wanted to get out of there alive, not kill someone. It's not any of our faults that Kate and Peter were complete psychopaths who didn't make that possible without killing them, first."

"So that makes it second-degree, not first," Jackson argued with a sneer. "Still murder. Capital murder, if you count the alpha-boost as a personal gain as a direct result of the homicide."

"Me and you were accessories to involuntary manslaughter _at worst_ , and Derek-"

"'Involuntary', my ass!" Jackson cut him off with. "Derek knew what he was doing when he ripped out Peter's throat, and it's not like you didn't realize what setting the guy on fire would do to his chances of surviving the fight." He started counting off on his fingers. "Willful and deliberate action, intended consequence was death, and-"

"It was justifiable homicide!" Stilinski cried out.

"Hale - Peter - was incapacitated already, that automatically negates self-defense," Jackson said. "He stalked up to the guy and literally ripped his throat out. That's practically the definition of 'intentional infliction of serious bodily harm'."

"Peter was an _alpha werewolf_ ," Stilinski said, drawing out the words like _Jackson_ was the idiot, here. "He could heal!"

"But not fast enough to kill them before safe exit from the vicinity," Jackson said, jerking on the chains for emphasis. "Derek didn't need to kill him at that point, but he did. It was second-degree murder, which makes _you_ an accessory-"

"Guys?" McCall cut in. Allison looked between Jackson and Stilinski, bewildered. Apparently, she'd never heard an argument between a cop's kid and a lawyer's kid, before. "I hate to say this, but neither of your dads' jobs apply, here. I don't think a supernatural creature is going to be deciding who to kill based on penal codes."

"Then how does it choose? And how does it decide if someone is a murderer?" Allison asked. "Is someone still a murderer if they only killed to defend themselves, or save someone else's life? What if someone only caused a death, but didn't actually kill?"

"See, _this_ is why the justice system is based on codes and laws that are thought out and written down," Stilinski said. "Not just whatever fairytale sounds the prettiest when it's read outloud."

"There are so many things wrong with this system," McCall muttered.

"You don't need to tell me," Jackson growled. "I'm not the killer, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but Stilinski and Allison have a point. We have 'justifiable homicide' for a reason. Whoever _is_ the killer probably doesn't care about human law."

"Look," McCall said, pushing his indignant friend to the side to crawl up into the van and sit across from Jackson, just out of reach. "I know you don't remember-"

"I don't remember because I didn't do it!" Jackson shouted. McCall flinched, and Jackson said, "I'm not a killer. I don't even know those people who were killed. Besides, I already told Stilinski, I was at home for all the murders. I've been getting migraines."

"That's awfully convenient," Stilinski said.

"Spoken like someone who's never had a migraine," Jackson grumbled. "I'm not a killer, but that might not last if you don't let me out _right now_."

McCall shook his head apologetically. "I'm sorry, but we can't let you kill anyone else."

"I'm NOT. THE. KILLER!"

McCall actually flinched back, Jackson's yell echoing in the van.

"...I'm sorry," Scott repeated quietly.

"What would you even do if I were the killer, huh?" Jackson challenged. "Keep me here forever?"

"No," Allison said regretfully, shuffling her feet and ducking her head.

"We'd just kill _you_ ," Stilinski said.

"Stiles!" McCall cried out, but Stilinski didn't flinch.

"What?" Stilinski said, ignoring Jackson staring at him to challenge Scott. "We have to stop him from killing everyone else, and we can't actually hold him prisoner forever."

“He risked his life for us!” McCall snapped, and he sounded - angry? “Against Peter! Remember that?”

…why was McCall defending Jackson? McCall hated him.

“Yes, but we just found out he got the Bite from Derek right after," Stilinski said. "It’s funny, how he got exactly what he wanted after he supposedly risked his life for us.”

Well, at least that explained some of why Stilinski could be so casual about killing him.

"I didn't help you just to get the Bite," Jackson cut-in. "I helped because you were going after the guy who attacked Lydia."

"Oh, so you're willing to help kill for her, but you won't support her when she's traumatized by it?" Stiles challenged. "Or is it just that you're only willing to help her as long as it makes you look good?"

Jackson scowled again.

"Look, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Scott started, and Jackson snorted at that. Did any of them know what the hell they were doing?

“So what?” Stilinski challenged.

“So...I didn’t either!”

Jackson glared down at his shaking hands.

Stupid hands and stupid everything else. He couldn’t even turn into a werewolf or just _die_ or something useful-

“Remember that time I tried to kill you and Jackson?” Scott said, addressing Allison.

She bit her lip, and nodded. "I think it's still the only time I've ever seen you angry."

"That's because you didn't know him in elementary school," Jackson said darkly. "You should've seen our art room after his tantrum in third grade."

Allison stared at Scott, shocked, as the other boy reluctantly nodded. "But that was a long time ago! I had therapy and stuff. I'm better, now."

"That explains a lot, actually," she said. When Scott looked alarmed, she quickly added, "In a good way! Promise!"

Scott looked like he wanted to ask her what she meant, but when Jackson shifted his weight, the chains clinked loud and clear in the police van. The werewolf continued his earlier train of thought with, “Look, my point is, I had somebody to stop me. He has nobody!”

Well, he wasn’t wrong.

Still, Jackson scowled. "I'm _right here_." He hated how thick his voice was - it must've been obvious that he was talking around a lump in his throat.

He wasn’t this stupid, he wasn’t this emotional, and he wasn’t this dependent.

"We'll try everything we can," Scott said, addressing Jackson directly. "We want to save as many people as possible, but that means keeping you here so you don't kill anyone else."

"I won't be killing anyone," Jackson said, drawing out the word as clearly as possible. "Because I'm _not the killer_!"

All three of them sighed, and Jackson's scowl deepened.

"I'm sorry," Scott repeated again, and slipped out the back of the van with an ease that Jackson envied.

Allison closed the doors with regret clear in her eyes, and Jackson shut his eyes and slumped forward as soon as they shut.

_"I was listening to his heartbeat,"_ Scott said outside, three sets of footsteps meandering away. _"He believed what he was saying."_

_"Or he knows how to control his heartbeat,"_ Stiles said. _"It's not that difficult. There's a reason why detectives don't use polygraphs that much."_

_"I think he's telling the truth,"_ Allison said. _"It's just that it doesn't mean much. If Jackson doesn't know anything, then someone is using him, and we're back to square one._

_"I still say we just kill him,"_ Stilinski said. _"And make sure the world is safe from him permanently."_

_"We can't just kill him because it's convenient!"_ Scott snapped. _"We have to try to save him. No one else is going to help him, and if we can save him, we have to do it."_

"Scott," Stilinski started.

_  
_

"No!" Scott said. _"We just - he doesn't have anyone else."_

Jackson inhaled, deep and shaky and desperate. He wasn’t a child and he wasn’t going to cry, he was better than that-

_“That’s his own damn fault,”_ Stilinski said.

He shuddered and leaned back against the wall as a disobedient tear slid down his cheek.

On this, Stilinski was right.

Jackson had people in his corner. He knew that. He knew that his parents had stayed in his corner, and they hadn’t expected that much in return. Good grades, good at sports, and good behavior. Apart from the occasional speeding ticket, Jackson either managed it all or faked it well enough. And that helped him be enough for Lydia, who only needed him to be enough to keep up with her. Out of everyone in the school, Jackson was easily her best option.

Until Scott and Stilinski, anyway. The rising new lacrosse player and the only other person as smart as her. But they were two people, and Jackson was nearly able to take all of that and put it in his one, lonesome self. He could’ve been the perfect son, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect everything.

Instead, his parents had no idea what to do with him, he dumped Lydia, and now he was even ignoring Danny.

But still…killing Jackson? Because they thought he _might_ be a serial killer?

God, Jackson hoped it was bluster. Jackson didn’t know about his chances against Scott or Allison, but he could take on Stilinski no problem. And Stilinski was the only one who actively wanted him dead.

But Jackson really did not want to be on the lacrosse team with a psychopath.

It had to be bluster - Stilinski was too much his father’s son to be able to kill someone in cold blood.

(He hoped. It wasn’t like he could ever forget seeing the boy light the alpha on fire. But the monstrous werewolf had been about to kill them all…and Jackson _had_ kind of helped...)

_“How long can we keep him here?”_ Allison finally asked.

_  
_

“This particular spot, not for long,” Stilinski said. _“But as long as we keep moving around…a while, if we need to.”_

That was ominous.

How long could they really keep him? More importantly, how long _would_ they?

_“Let’s try to avoid that,”_ Scott said. _“We don’t know if the police can track the van, somehow-”_

“I disabled the tracking chip!” Stilinski said, indignant.

_  
_

“-or who might see it and tell them,” Scott continued.

_  
_

“Who’s there to tell?” Allison said. Her voice sounded thick, like she was trying not to cry, but her tone was pragmatic. All the sentiment of a teenage girl and all the practicality of a Hunter. _“I don’t think those crows are going to tell the police about us.”_

_“Actually, those are ravens,” Stilinski corrected._

Jackson couldn’t help but laugh, wet and harsh. Kidnapping, murderers, and serial killers aside, Stilinski was still an easily-distracted nerd and somehow, that just made everything even worse.

They weren’t crazy people pretending to be sane by day, like Derek. They weren’t sane people forcing themselves to be something they’re not, like Jackson or Lydia. They were just themselves, and ‘themselves’ meant moral and do-gooding people who could actually do good. They were genuinely kind and would do anything to protect people, and maybe even save Jackson if they could.

Jackson couldn’t even dream of being someone like them.

Of course, being moral might also mean killing Jackson. Stilinski already wanted to kill him, and if Allison was anything like the rest of her family, she would know how to actually do it.

With another shaky breath, he shifted his weight and thumped his head back against the wall. They still hadn’t decided what to do with him, and that meant he couldn’t plan for how to get away.

He shivered, and knew it had nothing to do with the actual chill of the prisoner van.

His hands stung.

His hands stung, and-

No.

His skin simmered blue in the corner of his eye. Feeling his veins freeze in horror, Jackson lowered his gaze to his hands.

To the scales on his hands.

…no…

This was a trick. They drugged him, or maybe he was just losing his mind, like some demented Stockholm Syndrome. He shook his head like he could get rid of his sudden dizziness like that-

-nonononono-

This was not happening, he was bitten by a werewolf, not a lizard, there was no way this was possible.

There couldn't be.

Jackson wasn't a killer.

He wasn't.

~*~

Scott watched Stiles drive away until he couldn’t hear the jeep anymore. Then he leaned back against the side of Allison’s car, brushing his hip against hers.

“He better take care of my phone,” Allison grumbled.

“He says that as soon as the GPS would mark texts as coming from the library, his phone and yours are going to have a long and completely unhelpful conversation about Lydia,” Scott said. “He’ll be building your alibi with your family while he looks for more information on the kanima.”

Allison nodded, still nervous but trying not to show it.

He was nervous, too.

“Allison…” He trailed off. How do you ask your girlfriend if she’s betraying you? “Your dad…how did he know to be there tonight? And your grandfather?”

She just looked at him. But she wasn’t confused or hurt or angry.

Just…resigned.

Somehow, that hurt most.

“I didn’t tell him,” she said quietly, looking down at her boots. “I never said anything. They have…a lot of guys working for them.” Her lips twisted into the most depressing attempt at a smile Scott had ever seen in his life. And that included all the times he'd watched Stiles try to be cheerful right after his mom died. “I’ll be in our basement handling crossbows while surrounded by laptops monitoring cameras all over town. It’s ridiculous.”

She shivered, and Scott wrapped an arm around her, pulling her closer to his side. He was debating on offering her the hoodie he was wearing when she murmured, “I didn’t betray you. I swear.”

“I believe you,” Scott said, and he did. He didn’t even need her heartbeat to believe it, though the fact it didn’t tic with a lie was reassuring. “I just…”

“We’re scared,” she said, leaning in to tuck her head under his. Scott pressed his lips to her temple and nodded.

“But we’ll make it,” he said. “We’ve made it this far, we won’t back down now. We’ll fix this, all of this. We’ll save Jackson, get rid of the kanima, and find a way to end the war between your family and Derek’s pack once and for all.”

Allison laughed once. Or sobbed. Or maybe both.

“I wish I had your optimism,” she said, pressing her face into his neck, like she was hiding from the woods and the evening chill.

Scott tightened his arms around her, like he could protect her. He wished he could, but some of the worst monsters he knew lived in her house.

“We have to try,” he said. “Because if we don’t…then what’s the point of all this? Of any of this? If we try, we might lose, but if we don’t try, we _will_ lose.” He pressed another kiss to the top of her head. “I want us to work. I don’t know how, yet, but…”

“I do, too,” she said. Then took a deep breath. “And I’m not even sure if we should wait until we’re done with high school.”

“Yeah, but your family might kill me if we try,” Scott pointed out. He winced as he remembered Chris putting a gun to his head. “I kind of like my insides on the inside.”

Allison laughed.

“I’ll protect you,” she said, bringing up one hand to tug on a belt loop. “Promise. I might as well put all that training to good use.”

“…how’s that going, anyway?” Scott said. “What does Hunter training mean?”

“Apparently, it’s been going on my whole life without me noticing,” she said in a grieving voice. “The archery is obvious, but it’s not the only thing. Gymnastics was to keep me in shape and make sure I can move as needed in the field. Learning about all the guns and weapons wasn’t just so I can help out with the family business, it was to use them. Evasive driving is now all-terrain driving, I’m learning how to use maps and plotting and…all sorts of stuff. And don’t get me started on the combat.”

“Combat?” Scott asked, leaning back in surprise. “I think I’m gonna have to get you started on it.”

Allison laughed again, this time without a trace of humor.

“My whole life, I learned all sorts of self-defense moves and did martial arts in half the towns we moved to. I sparred all the time with my family, especially my aunt. They always said it was just in case anyone ever targeted me because my dad sold weapons, but…”

“It’s not,” Scott said, and Allison nodded.

“It used to be fun,” she said. “I mean, even back then, the reason sucked, but…I liked spending time with my mom and my dad and my Aunt Kate that way. But now…”

Scott thought for a minute, looking around himself.

“…maybe you can show me a few moves?”

Allison actually pulled her head back to blink at him in surprise.

“What?”

Scott gave her a small, encouraging smile, and actually pulled away a little to tug her towards the open space between the car and the van.

“Maybe it can be fun again,” Scott said, holding his fists up like in the movies. “Show me?”

Allison smiled, fond and slightly exasperated but stepping forward all the same.

“Okay, first off, you’ll break your thumb with a fist like that,” she said. She took his hand and pulling his thumb out from in his fingers before bending it a little so the tip tucked against his knuckle.

“It’ll heal overnight,” Scott pointed out.

“But not in the middle of a fight,” Allison said, giving him a pointed glance as she stepped back and let him take a fighting stance, left side towards her.

Abruptly, she struck out at Scott’s right. He blocked it, only to end up flying off his feet and landing on his back when her ankle came out of nowhere to strike him in one of his.

He looked up at her balefully. “You didn’t warn me!” he pouted.

“There are no warnings in battle,” she said calmly. She sounded like she was reciting something.

Despite the creepy quote, she held out her hand and pulled him up. Scott let go, then snatched at her side, tickling her as he ducked her shaky punch. He grinned as she laughed while kicking at him from the side, making him bounce away several steps.

They took up matching fighting stances - the one with your body tilted and your fists up. But hers looked…tighter. More controlled.

Scott was just copying stuff he saw on YouTube.

He managed to block her double-punch and a kick aimed at his side, and even managed to brush her shoulder with a punch of his own. But then she did something with her ankle and his knee and he was kneeling. He tried to protect his chest only for her to whirl around him and kick his shoulder, sending him sprawling on his stomach.

Face in the dirt, Scott growled and grinned.

“Oh, it’s _on_ , now,” he said delightedly, twisting onto his back. He scrambled up as she took up a fight stance again, small smile and cute blush on her face.

“If you say so,” she said, and struck out again.

Even with werewolf speed and reflexes, Scott was only barely not-losing, and he was on the defensive against her and he knew it. How much of this was her recent training and how much of this was from a life of practice?

He didn’t know, he didn’t care, and he didn’t think it mattered. All he knew was that he was working hard to keep her from throwing him to the ground again.

And, well, she didn’t throw him to the ground again. She ducked under him somehow, and grabbed his wrist and launched her body up, and flipped Scott over her head holy crap-

He groaned when he landed on the ground again, and tried to kick out at her ankles. She dodged them, nimbly leaping over him and sitting on him instead, straddling his hips and using her weight to pin down his wrists.

His vision cleared and he blinked up at her, just a little bit stunned.

Okay, a lot stunned.

“I win,” she said, smug smile making his heart flutter. Thank god she couldn't hear it.

“…I don’t exactly feel like I’m losing,” Scott admitted, looking down to where she was sitting on his hips.

And something a little more important.

Her eyebrows rose as she looked down to where their bodies were joined, feeling him.

“Wow,” she said, sounding a little stunned and a lot pleased, herself. “You…really like sparring.”

Scott grinned up at her. “Yeah, I, um…”

She didn’t make him finish that sentence, instead giving him an appraising look before leaning down and pressing her lips to his.

Oh, well.

This wasn’t like any sparring Scott had ever seen, but he didn't complain.

(Two hours, later, though, Stiles did.

“You had _one job_!” he shouted as Scott and Allison scrambled to get dressed, voice echoing in the now-empty expanse of the prisoner van. “ONE. JOB!”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think, good or bad, what you want to see more of and what I need to improve on. I want this fic to be as good for you guys to read as it is for me to write. :)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Ch. 3 Preview:**
> 
> _“Home!” Dad snapped, pointing out the door with a shaking hand. “_ Now _. Go there, and stay there. I don’t know what you’ve been doing over the last few months, or what you’ve gotten involved in, but it ends now. Just stay out of trouble for one night.” He pursed his lips. “Hopefully, that’s not too much to ask.”_
> 
> _Stiles opened his mouth, ready to defend himself, before realizing there was really nothing he could say - not without telling his father everything about werewolves, about just how much he’s been lying for the last few months, about helping_ kill _someone, and just how spectacularly out of their depth the entire sheriff’s department was in this town._
> 
> _He closed his mouth and went._


	3. 207 - Restraint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More missing scenes, with lots of Erica and Allison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, I'm stretching out the canon timeline a bit.

~*~

It was only after nearly an hour of Mr. Whittemore going on and on about the restraining order against Scott and Stiles that Dad finally demanded, “Well? What do you have to say for yourselves? Why would you _do_ something like this?”

Stiles kept his gaze on the table, knowing full well that the moment he looked up, he would turn into a sobbing wreck. Even with Jackson in the room.

He tried to think of a cover story, something which would make sense of their actions and keep them out of jail and maybe, just maybe, make his dad not hate him-

“We wanted to show him what it was like,” Scott said.

Stiles almost frowned, but otherwise kept his face as blank as possible as he looked at Scott because _what_?

“What?” Dad unintentionally echoed.

Scott swallowed and looked almost…mad…as he looked up at the sheriff.

He’d always been a better liar than Stiles.

Something about that honest face.

“He was saying some nasty stuff about the girls in our class,” Scott said lowly, jaw clenched. “So we decided to give him a taste of what he was saying.”

Stiles fought down the strong urge to sob in relief.

Scott wasn't good at quick thinking like Stiles was - but when he couldn't plan ahead, he was great at thinking on the fly.

As soon as they had a moment alone, Scott was getting the highest of fives for this.

But now wasn’t the time for that.

Now was the time for confirmation, so Stiles - as flippantly as possible - added, “Preferably before he actually hurt anybody.”

“I’d never do that!” Jackson shouted, alarm on his face.

“Then what the hell did you mean when you said you’d make Allison scream?” Scott challenged, and Stiles looked nervously between the two not-so-humans because maybe this wasn’t just Scott using a grain of truth in his lies. Normally fantastic, but right now claws and fangs of rage were the last thing they needed.

Though, actually, what the hell _was_ Scott talking about? Not that it would surprise Stiles in the least, but when _did_ Jackson say nasty stuff about the girls they knew?

Jackson huffed smugly. “That I’d be a better lay than you ever were. Anytime I wanted, she would’ve dropped you for me-”

“So you could use her to cheat on Lydia?” Stiles snapped, because okay, if they were gonna do this, then they were gonna _do_ this.

“Oh, please!” Jackson sneered. “You were just as pissed at Lydia and McCall for making out as I was-”

“Boys!” Dad snapped.

Three jaws clicked shut, and while Stiles kept his head down, he looked up through his eyelashes at his dad.

He and Mr. Whittemore looked at each other in bewilderment and alarm, and Stiles mentally apologized to them both, though especially his dad.

Any crime became ten times more complicated the moment even a hint of sex entered the picture - especially with minors.

“Dad,” Jackson said, imploring gaze directed at his own father. “They’re making stuff up to cover their own asses.”

Stiles scowled. “You _just_ admitted-”

“Quiet!”

At Dad’s sharp command, Stiles stopped talking, slumping back in his seat.

The Sheriff and the District Attorney were looking between each other and the three boys in frustration, and something approaching commiseration.

After a moment so tense even Derek would have trouble clawing through it, Dad turned to Mr. Whittemore and said, “Let’s talk outside.”

After a long look at his son, the other man agreed with a sharp, wordless nod.

“You three-” Dad pointed to each of them one by one. “-Are going to stay and sit here quietly. Do I make myself clear?”

They all mumbled their _yes, sir’s_ and a moment later, the two fathers were gone from the room.

The following minute in the little interrogation room wasn’t _the_ tensest silence Stiles had ever been in, but it was pretty damn close. Especially since Jackson was staring at them so hard, Stiles was starting to worry that they’d have to deal with a kanima again.

Instead, the were-lizard broke that silence by saying with quiet fury, “I would never hurt a girl like that.”

Scott glared in disbelief, and Stiles rolled his eyes. “Sure you won't.”

Jackson's jaw tensed. "You lied to them about this. Why?"

“Because we don’t want to disappoint our parents or go to jail,” Stiles snapped. “Especially just for trying to stop you from killing anyone else. Which, by the way, is way worse than the not-exactly-false crap we're saying right now-”

“I’m telling you, I didn’t kill anybody!” Jackson hissed at them.

Scott cocked his head to the side, tilting his temple forward as he narrowed his eyes at Jackson.

“…your heartbeat just ticked a bit, right now,” he said carefully. “Like you didn’t believe that.”

Jackson bared his teeth as he said, “I. Didn’t. Kill. Anyone!”

Scott shook his head. “That still-”

“I didn’t kill anyone, I don’t plan to kill anyone, and I would never do any of what you’re implying to Allison, or any other girl,” Jackson snapped. “And your baseless accusations-”

“They’re not exactly baseless,” Scott snapped. “You _were_ saying nasty stuff about Allison just a few months ago-”

“I was only saying them to get to you!” Jackson said quietly. “I never meant a word of it. I wouldn't hurt a girl like that. In case you forgot, _I’m_ the one that helped Lydia at the dance instead of abandoning her on the field!”

Stiles clamped his hands on the edge of the table as he glared at Jackson. Blood pounding and muscles tensing, he used every ounce of self-control he possessed to not just throw himself fist-first at Jackson’s face.

Was this how Scott felt all the time since the Bite? No wonder he had problems.

“I did not abandon her,” Stiles said, enunciating each word lest they blur together in his anger. “I was kidnapped. By an alpha.”

Scott must’ve heard Stiles’ heartbeat or blood rushing or something, because his eyes widened in alarm. “Stiles-”

“He had his claws to my throat,” Stiles said, and it may not have just been anger his heart was pounding with now. “I was literally begging him for her life. I was telling him to _kill_ me. All he would let me do was call you.”

Scott didn’t sound like he was breathing, and Stiles couldn’t blame him - he didn’t think he’d ever said any of this out loud to anyone until now.

Jackson, strangely enough, was looking angry.

Stiles swallowed the lump in his throat as he said, “I called you, and he wouldn’t even let me say anything other than where Lydia was and that she needed your help. And then I had to leave her behind. _Had_ to.” Jackson’s jaw clenched. “Do you know what it was like, having to leave her behind like that? Do you-”

“Do you have any idea what it was like to have to carry her half-dead body back to the school like that?!” Jackson shouted, standing up and looking bulkier in the department jacket he was wearing.

The door practically burst open as their dads came back in, alarmed, but Jackson continued shouting, “She was covered in blood and I thought she was dead! _I_ was the one who carried her back-”

“Sit down!” Dad shouted at them both, but Stiles didn’t hear him, pushing himself to his feet with his fists trembling at his sides.

“Oh, sure, help her when it made you look all heroic,” Stiles hissed, also leaning forward and getting into Jackson's face. “But the moment she needed you, when she was traumatized and everyone thought she was going crazy, you dumped her because she made you _look_ bad! You never gave a damn about her, you just wanted to use her, and the moment you couldn't screw her anymore, you-”

Jackson launched himself at Stiles with an all-too-human snarl of rage. It would have probably ended with both of them on the floor if Scott hadn’t gotten between them, shoving Jackson back long enough for Mr. Whittemore to grab onto Jackson's arm while Dad wrapped an arm around Stiles' shoulders.

That was probably why Stiles was finding it so difficult to punch Jackson in the face.

“At least I’m not the one who keeps showing up at murder scenes,” Jackson said, his entirely human face contorted into an almost animalistic snarl. “Why do you keep appearing there, huh?”

“Why do you always seem to have a migraine whenever someone’s dying, _huh_?” Stiles challenged. “That seems awfully convenient for the guy with a history of a violent anger management issues-”

“That’s rich,” Jackson said, glaring between Stiles and Scott. “Coming from the _sociopath_ who wanted to-”

“That’s it!” Mr. Whittemore snapped, sharing a look with Dad that seemed to be the two of them commiserating just how out of their depth they were. “We’re going home. We can finish this later.”

“Dad-” Jackson started.

“Now!”

The Sheriff didn’t loosen his grip on Stiles until both Whittemores were gone.

For a moment, the room was silent, save for Stiles’ heavy breathing, and holy crap he didn’t realize he'd been that pissed. Scott was also angry, but apparently werewolf training did him some good. He was standing a little bit crouched, ready to move, but his breathing was even and only his tight jaw and almost-pursed lips gave him away.

Finally, Dad let go, stepping back and sounding harried as he said, “Sit down. Both of you.”

They sat. The force of dropping down into the chair seemed to punch all the breath out of Stiles.

He was still trying to get his breath back as Dad paced within the meager space between the interrogation table edge and the mirrored wall. He opened his mouth twice to say something, closing it again both times as he swiped at his hair in frustration.

“As far as the law is concerned,” he said finally. “There is no evidence of the allegations you’re making - yet there _is_ evidence of the theft and the kidnapping.”

Stiles flinched as the implications sunk in.

“But honestly?” Dad said, and that 'but' gave Stiles hope and terrified him in equal measures. “That’s not even the worst part. David either believes you or just doesn’t want to deal with the legal hassle, because he’s not pressing charges. He could, and he still might, but he isn’t yet. He _is_ formally filing the restraining order as we speak.”

Stiles swallowed, again and again and again, struggling not to cry at the increasing weight of his father’s voice.

“The part that I don’t understand,” Dad said, looking oddly…hurt? “Is why you didn’t bring something like this to me. If he was really saying stuff, making threats, why did you try to deal with it on your own? And like this, of all ways?”

Stiles opened his mouth, but he couldn’t look up from the table, couldn’t look at his dad, and couldn’t think. He closed his mouth as he looked helplessly at Scott.

Thank god for Scott.

“It’s like you said,” Scott explained, giving Stiles a reassuring look before paying attention to the Sheriff. “There’s no evidence. We didn’t have proof, and even if we did or could get people to believe us - he’d just get suspended and kicked off the lacrosse team, and that would be the worst of it. He’d end up pissed instead of learning his lesson, and our team would lose its best player.”

Stiles badly suppressed a hysterical laugh, because way to go Scott. Way to make them sound exactly like the immature teenage boys they were supposed to be, teenagers who put their sports team ahead of everything else. Nothing like dumb kids trying to stop a serial killer and a genocidal maniac at the same time.

Now that Scott had found something for Stiles to latch on to, he could fill in.

“If it had gone the way it was supposed to,” Stiles said, looking back down at the shiny table surface. “None of this would’ve happened. Jackson would’ve learned his lesson, we’d return the van before anyone noticed it was missing, and he would still be on the lacrosse team for the last two games. Everybody wins.” He paused, then added, "And besides, if he'd just gotten suspended or kicked off the team or something... When guys get angry, they take it out on girls, which is the exact opposite of what we needed."

Stiles could guess how his dad looked without seeing for himself. He could picture the frustration and disappointment perfectly, and he knew he should grow up and face it head on, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“You went through all this trouble,” Dad began, only for the door to open and a deputy to lean in.

Before Stiles could even think ‘saved by the door’, the deputy said, “Sir, Melissa McCall is up front.”

Stiles could feel Scott tense up beside him.

Dad sighed. “Thank you,” he said, dismissing the officer with a wave of his hand. The door closed, and Dad moved so he was standing between them on the other side of the table. It looked like his arms were still crossed, but Stiles didn’t look up to check.

“I think I’ll let your mother deal with you,” Dad said, presumably to Scott. “Get up, c’mon.”

Stiles remained still as Scott stood, shifting only to lean into the touch when Scott patted his shoulder in support on his way out. Dad went with him, so as soon as the door closed, Stiles crossed his arms on the table and let his head fall forward.

Breathe in for one - two - three. Hold.

Breathe out - one, two, three. Hold.

Breathe in - hold.

Hold.

Hold.

Breathe out with his mouth pressed against his arm like it could keep the sob inside him where it belonged.

Breathe in through fabric and flesh, and pray that he didn’t get a panic attack. Not here and not now.

Stiles wasn’t completely sure how long he was like that, trying to keep himself from caving into his panic attack or a breakdown, but he jerked upright when the door opened and scrubbed at his face when Dad came back in.

“That took a while,” Stiles said easily, trying and failing for flippant. “I was starting to fall asleep.”

Dad clearly didn’t believe it, but whatever he was actually thinking, it didn’t reach his face in any way Stiles could understand.

Finally, Dad stood back, holding the door open. “Go home, Stiles.”

Stiles blinked, confused. “What-”

“Home!” Dad snapped, pointing out the door with a shaking hand. “ _Now_. Go there, and stay there. I don’t know what you’ve been doing over the last few months, or what you’ve gotten involved in, but it ends now. Just stay out of trouble for one night.” His snarl could've made a werewolf proud. “Hopefully, that’s not too much to ask.”

Stiles opened his mouth, ready to defend himself, before realizing there was really nothing he could say - not without telling his father everything about werewolves, about just how much he’s been lying for the last few months, about helping _kill_ someone, and just how spectacularly out of their depth the entire sheriff’s department was in this town.

He closed his mouth and went.

Throughout the station, the police officers milling around glanced at him and looked away again. Stiles kept his gaze to the ground, trying to avoid the uncomfortable looks from deputies who he’d grown up pestering and following around. Deputies who’d been more than happy to keep an eye on a pre-pubescent menace in the office in the months after Mom’s death. Deputies who’d helped him with his homework and let him hide under their desks when the world got to be just a bit too much for little Stiles to handle.

They had practically helped raise him, and raised him to be better than this, yet he was still turning into someone they couldn't recognize.

And there was nothing Stiles could do about it. So he hung his head and went outside, shivering while crossing the dark parking lot towards his jeep.

As he drove home, his heart started pounding and his hands shook bad enough to affect his steering.

When he swerved right over a yellow line, he pulled over into a wide shoulder and killed the engine.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he sobbed out to himself. “Jus’ a panic attack, Stiles, c’mon, you grew out of these years ago.”

One hand on his chest, another on his diaphragm. Breathe in through his nose, blow out his mouth. Count backwards in sevens, too, a little mental math to derail the fear process of his stupid, useless brain.

"100...93...86...69...62...55…"

He counted back from a hundred twice, first in sevens, then in fours, going down to negative one hundred both times. Then, his shaking hands reduced to minor trembles, he started driving again, keeping as much of his attention on the road as possible as he lied to himself that everything was going to be okay.

It was nothing short of a miracle that he made it home without another panic attack. He stumbled in through his door and stood helplessly in the kitchen, staring around himself and knowing he wasn’t going to be able to go to bed anytime soon.

How could he just…go to bed, after a night like this?

Thankfully, it took only a moment to find something to do.

With a determined swallow, he grabbed some paper towels and wiped down all the counters, then the kitchen table, then the coffee table in the living room while he was at it.

He washed the lone dish and spoon in the kitchen sink, and he was about to take out the trash when his phone started vibrating.

He blinked in surprise at the caller ID.

“Allison?”

“Stiles?” she said, sounding like she was whispering. “Hey! Listen, we have to talk fast - what happened? After the kanima escaped?”

She _was_ whispering. She must have made it home safe, then.

Well, 'safe' being a very relative term when it came to the Argent family.

“Jackson made it to the police station, and told them me and Scott kidnapped him,” Stiles said dully.

“…what?!”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, pressing the phone between his shoulder and his jaw as he fished around for the box of trashbags under the sink. “But, uh, they might talk to you in a bit, because Scott claimed Jackson was saying nasty stuff about you and Lydia and we were trying to teach him a lesson or something. I dunno. We don’t have proof so it doesn’t help much, but I guess it was enough that his father didn’t press charges against us. Just a restraining order.”

“A restraining order?” Allison murmured incredulously.

“Yup,” Stiles said, popping the ‘p’ as he extracted a bag from the box and turned to the garbage can tucked between the edge of the counter and the backdoor. “Don’t know how much it’ll matter, but…”

“But what?” she asked, sounding nervous.

Stiles sighed. “I just - I don’t think my dad’s ever been so…”

“…angry?” she tried to fill in for him.

“Angry, disappointed, frustrated, may possible hate me,” Stiles rattled off. “He definitely doesn’t trust me, anymore, though it wasn't like he trusted me much, before.”

“Well, at least he hasn’t tried to infiltrate your school just to spy on you yet?” Allison whispered, and Stiles laughed, though it sounded a bit too much like a sob for his comfort. "There's a reason I said we have to talk fast. My parents not only spy on me, they have half a dozen other people around to spy on me _for_ them."

“No offense, but that isn’t exactly saying much.”

“I know, but it’s all I’ve got,” Allison said.

“I appreciate it,” Stiles said, trying to pull out the bag from the trashcan. This proved a little harder than anticipated, since both he and his dad tended to just push the trash down a lot instead of actually taking it out. “And it’s true. I mean, who knows what he _will_ do, now, but-”

The trashbag came out, but the can toppled right over, and Stiles cursed as he quickly tied off the bag.

“What was that?” Allison whispered curiously.

“I’m taking out the trash,” Stiles said.

“…at four in the morning?”

Stiles stared down into the empty trashcan. “I guess I’m just hoping if I…help around the house a bit more, or something, it will make my dad a little less pissed at me.”

“Do you really think that’ll work?”

“Not really,” Stiles admitted. “But I have to try something.”

“I know the feeling,” she reassured. “Listen - Lydia came by, and I mentioned needing those pages translated. Turns out she knows Archaic Latin.”

“…she just ‘knows’ Archaic Latin?” Stiles asked.

“She said she got bored with Classical Latin,” Allison said dismissively. That sounded like Lydia, all right - the real Lydia, not the version of Lydia most people knew. “Anyway, she said the translation from Morell was wrong. The kanima doesn’t seek a friend - it seeks a master.”

Stiles frowned. “A _master_?”

“Yeah, and that makes a little more sense,” Allison said. “A kanima is supposed to result from not having an identity, but you need a sense of self to make friends, right? That didn’t make much sense if you took it literally. But you don’t need an identity if you have a master. It’s even better not to have one.”

Stiles shut his eyes. “So not only does Jackson have no idea what he’s doing, but he’s being mind-controlled into doing it.”

“Yeah,” Allison said. “Tomorrow, I-”

She paused, and a moment later Stiles could hear a sharp, anxious breath.

“Gotta go, someone’s coming!”

She abruptly hung up, and Stiles blinked down at his phone in absent bewilderment.

“Isolation from friends, check,” he muttered humorlessly, staring down at the picture of her on his caller ID screen. “Fear of family members and going home, check. Violating all her safe spaces, check. Negating her personal autonomy, check...”

For a moment, he briefly considered trying to call down CPS on the Argent family - surely, even without the supernatural elements, there were enough warning signs of psychological abuse for the police to investigate?

Except he’s heard his father’s inebriated ranting at how hard it was to interfere even when there was physical abuse involved somehow. Without physical evidence, interference was nearly hopeless, and anyway they weren’t isolating her from all of her friends. Only her closest ones, ones who just got caught kidnapping someone and had paper proof that they were bad influences - and it wouldn't be her parents' fault that Allison was still a pariah to the rest of the school after what Kate had done.

Besides, he had no doubt that the backlash from them would be devastating.

With a forlorn sigh, he pocketed his phone and turned back to his hopeless endeavors to make his dad hate him just a little less when he came home.

~*~

In the shadowed evening, just after the sunset plunged the world into darkness but before the moon rose high enough to light it back up again, Erica crept between backyards, coming to a halt outside her target.

She stood just beyond the Stilinskis' small yard for a short while, waiting until the Sheriff moved from the dining room - with its window to the yard - into the living room. As soon as he was gone, she slunk inward, keeping her head down so no potential nosy neighbors could spot her shiny blonde hair in the darkness. She leveraged herself on top of the little patio-top ledge, grinning at how easy it was with her new strength, and moved on all fours to the wall. She slowly stood up by the closed window and peeked over the ledge into Stiles' room-

Then dropped back down again, eyes wide.

Okay, she should've expected that. Jerking off in their rooms was a thing teenagers who were allowed to lock their doors could do. She assumed, anyway.

As she got over the sheer unexpectedness of it, a slow smile started to creep over her face as she waited.

It wasn't long, thank god. She had to crane her ear to hear him past all the other ambient noise of the neighborhood - supersenses were only as useful as your own ability to concentrate on them. But, after an impressively long while, there was a long, low sigh, then the sound of Stiles pulling up his pants and then wandering into the bathroom. He washed his hands and threw away his tissues in there. She wondered if he'd always done that, or if he only started after his best friend became a werewolf.

She waited. She waited until Stiles went downstairs and came back up with a laundry basket, waited until Stiles started folding, waited until he seemed relaxed and sinking into his routine.

Then she reached up and knocked on the window.

Stiles' yelp, the thud of him flailing off the bed, and his sky-rocketing heartbeat all had her grinning as she stood and turned to face the window again. The boy was literally clutching his chest as he blinked at her. He took a few more deep breaths before rolling his eyes to the ceiling like he was asking it for help.

"Goddamn werewolves who can't use the front door," he grumbled, voice muffled through the closed window. She realized that after the shock of her sudden appearance, he wasn't all that surprised. Well - from the sounds of it, someone else had come crawling through his window before. Maybe Scott? Though there was that weird conversation between Derek and Stiles at the pool...

Stiles huffed as he pushed himself up off his floor, but then got a wary look on his face as he approached his window, undid the clasps, and opened it up.

"Hi, Stiles," Erica greeted, leaning inwards. "Come here often?"

"Erica," he greeted flatly, giving her a nervous, yet appraising, look. Fidgeting and narrowing his eyes at her, not letting her into his room just yet, he asked, “Uh, how long were you out there?”

She didn’t answer, instead leering while pushing him back so she could actually come into his room.

“Don’t worry,” she said, making a show of considering the box of tissues sitting on his desk, and the laptop it was next to. “I won’t tell anyone what your sex face looks like.”

She grinned at his spluttering. "I don't have a sex face!" Stiles protested.

"Fine, fine, your O-face," Erica said, rolling her eyes. "If you're going to be semantic."

Stiles pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes as she turned on the spot, taking in his room. It looked like his brain had barfed all over the walls, with pictures, news clippings, and other print-outs pinned up everywhere. It was covered over in shallow nerdery and what grown-ups thought leet-speak looked like. At a glance, it looked like a plan for a fantasy novel. She spotted a box for World of Warcraft, and realized how Stiles could have this up on his walls without his dad getting too suspicious.

"It's not being semantic, it's being accurate," Stiles snapped. "Also, me trying to point out you were spying on me during a very private moment-"

"That's not exactly news to me," she said, looking at him. "Besides, I was just waiting for you to finish." At his incredulous look, she added, "Would you rather I came in while you were in the middle of your 'me' time?"

Stiles glared at her, crossing his arms and standing in front of the laundry on his bed like he was defending it. “What do you want?”

Erica smiled, sitting down in Stiles' chair and tilting her head. "What happened night before last?"

Stiles narrowed his eyes at her, sitting back down on the bed. "Excuse me?"

"You got into some serious trouble with the police," she said. "Something serious enough that your dad couldn't get you out of it. What was it?"

Stiles scowled. "What makes you think it has anything to do with you guys?"

"You are at least as caught up in this mess as we are - if not more, since you seem to know who the kanima is." She crossed her arms to match Stiles, causing him to drop his hands into his lap. "So Derek sent me to figure it out. One way or another, I'm leaving here with new information."

This time, Stiles snorted, pointedly turning back to the laundry he was folding.

"How did you even get here from Derek's lair?" Stiles asked. "Is he waiting outside in his car? Because I've gotta say, a Camaro is kind of noticeable around these parts."

Erica rolled her eyes. "I ran here, dumbass."

"All the way?" Stiles asked, surprised. "But that's halfway across town!"

"Werewolf, remember?" she said, flashing her eyes for emphasis. "Besides, I used to do track, so it's not as if running a lot is completely new to me."

"Used to?"

Erica gave him a long considering look. She didn't want to get distracted...

...but maybe she could get _Stiles_ distracted, and he'd let something slip.

Eventually, she leaned back in her chair and started inspecting her nails in that faux-disinterested way all the badasses in the movies seemed to do.

Not that she'd ever admit to anyone where her inspirations came from.

"I managed to get my parents to let me join the track team in freshman year after spending most of middle school begging," she said, trying to gently mimic Derek's storytelling voice. Minus the gruffness, anyway. "Swimming carried too much risk of drowning if I had a seizure in a pool, and everything else had too much contact for their tastes." She tilted her head, not taking her eyes off of her nails. "And we don't have a tennis team, so running around in a circle, it was."

Clenching her hand into a fist, she still didn't look back up at Stiles, merely tilted her chin up a little. Image, manipulation - she was getting good at all that. "But after a while, they decided a daughter who was both athletic and epileptic was too much hassle. The only reason I was able to even finish the season at all was because I kept sneaking out and got some of the older girls to give me rides. But now they've all graduated, and all the girls left don't want to associate themselves with the chick who pissed herself in class."

She looked up to smile nastily at him, make him feel a fraction of the discomfort she had to live with on a daily basis-

"I'm so sorry."

-and found herself discomfitted, instead.

Stiles looked genuinely sorry.

"...that's nice," she said finally. Then she flipped her hair, because what the hell else was she supposed to do? "But that doesn't really help me now."

"Why did your parents think it was a hassle?"

Erica started counting off on her finger. "Balancing doctor's visits with track practices-"

"You went to the doctor's that often?"

She snorted. "No."

Stiles frowned in confusion. "Then what-"

"It wasn't the reason, it was the excuse," she said, starting her finger-count again. "So 'balancing so many obligations our time', even after I told them they didn't have to come to my meets - not they did, anyway. The cost of managing my epilepsy and my athletics, because track uniforms are just _so_ expensive." She rolled her eyes. "And they wouldn't let me get a job to just pay for the damn things myself. And then, even this highly-supervised, easily accessible, and non-contact sport was too dangerous for 'a young lady of my condition'."

She rolled her eyes again for emphasis, but Stiles didn't seem to notice.

"They didn't come to your meets?" he asked, sounding adorably torn up about it.

She dropped her hand into her lap, staring at him incredulously.

" _That's_ what you take away from all that?"

Stiles continued to look heartbroken about it.

It was...kind of nice, actually. That someone else cared this much, even moreso for not being pack.

She sighed.

"They came to a few," she said. "Then my dad decided that it was 'just running in circles' and anyway, I wasn't getting medals yet, so he might as well stop taking time away from work. Then it was just my mom, which was okay." She swallowed. "Not everyone's parents showed up all the time, they had lives, but..."

Stiles fiddled with a pair of pants he hadn't folded yet. "But what?"

Erica glanced up at the ceiling, hoping for help on how to explain this.

"I'd never done any sports in my life before high school," she said finally, looking back at Stiles. "But - I was doing good. Really good. My mom came to my semi-finals and I placed fourth."

Stiles' eyes widened. "After one season?" he said, sounding incredulous but not quite disbelieving. "That's great!"

She smiled humorlessly. "Yeah. The coach said that, the team captain said that, and even someone from another team said that. But you know what the first thing my mom said about that meet, when I went to talk to her after?"

Stiles opened his mouth, then closed it, waiting for her to continue.

"She said, 'thank god nothing happened'."

Stiles frowned again, deeper this time. "What, like a seizure-"

"Yeah!" Erica snapped. "Because the only thing that mattered was whether or not I had a seizure. Because placing after only one season of training meant 'nothing' to her. Because she didn't even care about what I was doing, only that I didn't collapse while doing it!"

Stiles jerked back, and she realized she'd been leaning forward as she spoke, almost hissing at the end as all her old anger and frustration came back.

She forced herself to relax and lean back again. She isn't the one supposed to be getting riled up, here. She was not the manipulated, anymore - now, she was the manipulator.

"It's bad enough when everything else reduces me to my disease," she said. "But for your own parents to do that? For my own mom to see me as her 'epileptic daughter' instead of her 'daughter with epilepsy'...it was like I didn't exist. Only my epilepsy did."

Stiles took a deep breath.

"So that's why the make-over?" he asked, gesturing at her whole body with the pants leg, which now that she thought about it looked like the Sheriff's clothing, not his own. "Your identity was your condition, but it's gone now, so your identity was a blank slate-"

Erica surged forward again, and Stiles flailed back, upsetting a stack of neatly folded clothes.

She heard the spike in his heartbeat in time with the click of his jaws snapping closed. She didn't say a word as his own nervousness shut him up for her.

"To my parents, I'm a burden, and to everyone else, I'm a joke," she said, drawing out her words. Her fangs grew just that barest hint as she spoke - not enough to affect her speech, but enough for the tips to be noticeable. "But to my pack, I'm just me. Erica. Now I get to be who _I_ want to be instead of what everyone else expects me to be."

She leaned back again, the arms of Stiles' chair creaking in her grip as her fangs receded.

"Hunters, kanimas, the pain - it all sucks, but they're worth it. That's why I'm here. I'm not obeying Derek because I have to - I'm listening to him because I want to."

With a vicious smile, she tilted her head again. "And that's why I'm here, asking what you know, that we don't."

Stiles blinked in surprised at the mood-whiplash, but then his jaw clenched.

"I'm still not saying a damn thing," Stiles said. "I didn't back down for the _last_ alpha, I didn't back down for the hunters, and I'm sure as hell not backing down for you. And you can tell that to Derek, too."

Erica growled, her burst of anger so sudden it honestly startled her. But it startled Stiles even more, sending him reeling back towards the wall, almost upsetting a pile of what looked to be the Sheriff's shirts.

He backed away, but he wasn't cowering. Damn.

"Still not gonna work," Stiles said. "Derek was a lot scarier when he was two steps away from kidnapping me and actively threatening to rip my throat out with his teeth."

"Did you listen to him?" she asked curiously, letting her fangs recede as she tilted her head. She wanted to know this story.

Stiles snorted, easing forward to start righting the little piles of clothing.

"Yeah, but because he needed help, not because he scared me," Stiles said. "He'd just been shot by a wolfsbane bullet, and was on the verge of death."

"Huh." She actually leaned back in the seat and crossed one ankle over the other knee - teasing the tantalizing potential glimpse up her skirt. While Stiles' eyes skittered down for a moment, they otherwise remained fixed on her face. "You saved his life," she said, half admiration and half accusation.

Stiles slowly nodded. "Yeah. Few times. And he saved mine. And Scott - look, all I'm saying is that this chaos isn't completely new to us, okay?"

If Erica were being honest with herself, she was a little jealous of that. Even if it was only a few months, in that short time Derek had built up so much history with the other people, these other kids who weren't in the pack and weren't friendly at school and weren't...weren't...

She took a deep breath.

"So I'll have to be smarter about getting information, that's all," she said, as saccharine as she could manage.

Stiles snorted, and his eyes roved up and down her body. She could tell he was trying to unsettle her, so she didn't let it, instead acting as if she didn't even notice.

"Nope," Stiles said, popping the 'p' at the end and turning his attention to...seriously? He folded his dad's _underwear_? "I wouldn't have said anything even if you seduced me for it. And to be honest, that's what I would figure you'd try."

"Too obvious," Erica dismissed. He was paying way too much attention to the laundry, so at least he wasn't as settled and calm as his outer appearance implied. Then again, she could've gathered as much from his heartbeat. "It doesn't work if you know what I'm doing."

"Just as well," Stiles said. "Not like I have any condoms on me."

"You should get some," Erica said, thinking back to her health classes and the sex-ed sections. Her parents nearly opted her out of that, too. Like it would've stopped her. "You never know when something will happen, and when you're caught up in the moment..."

Stiles shrugged, rolling his eyes as he reached for some socks. "Yeah, sure," he muttered. "I'll just get right on that."

"If you do, get the ribbed condoms," she said, leering again as she remembered something she'd overheard some of the older track girls say, once, a long time ago. "I hear they're the best thing over."

Stiles stared at her, eyes popping wide open with incredulity as the socks dropped from his grip.

Finally, he shook his head.

"I'm still not saying anything, no matter how hard you try to shock me or...or whatever it is you're trying to do," Stiles said.

His heartbeat confirmed his words.

"So you might as well leave," he finished.

"Really?" she asked, one last long shot. "You're going to just withhold information from us?"

"Given that Derek is more interested in killing than helping? Yes," Stiles answered, clenching some of the socks in a frustrated grip.

Time for a new tactic.

"All right, then," she agreed, with the most amicable tone possible without descending into Uncanny Valley.

With a sigh to mask her own frustration, she stood and started for the door.

“What are you doing?!” Stiles hissed.

“Exactly what you asked me to do,” Erica said.

Stiles flailed on the bed, but by the time he even stood up, she was out the door.

She walked with heavy footsteps and made loud noises on her way down the stairs. She turned in the hallway to see a bewildered Sheriff sitting at his kitchen table again and staring at her, cup of coffee frozen halfway to his mouth.

Erica smiled, just as Stiles came barreling down the stairs.

“Hi, Sheriff!” she greeted with obnoxious cheer. “Bye, Sheriff!”

The Sheriff was still staring at her like he wasn’t sure if she was real as she sauntered out the front door.

Then, since the window curtains were closed, she waited on the front step.

_“What the hell was that about?!”_ the Sheriff demanded of his son a moment later.

Stiles sighed in frustration.

_“Just a girl from school,”_ Stiles said. _“Erica Reyes. An_ annoying _one who wanted to know how I’ve been and for some reason couldn’t just_ use a phone _or something.”_

Stiles knew full well she was listening in.

_“Why was she here?”_ the Sheriff asked, sounding both mad and exasperated.

_“She wanted to talk.”_

_“…to talk? Really? A girl like that sneaks into your bedroom to talk?”_

“Yes! That’s why she came out the front door, to annoy me-”

“And why does it annoy you?”

“Because you’re asking me all these questions!”

“Stiles, what part of ‘grounded’ do you not understand?”

“Dad-”

“You can’t just have a girl in your room after everything with Jackson!”

Her eyebrow rose at that. Jackson? What went on with Jackson?

_“I didn’t invite her!”_ Stiles defended himself. _“Check my phone and computer if you want. She just showed up. I said I didn’t want to talk and she got mad so she came out the front door knowing you’d get all ‘inquisitive’ on me. She’s probably going to mock me for this tomorrow.”_

The Sheriff groaned in exasperation, and she heard the distinct sound of a coffee mug landing on a table. _“Go back to your room. Now. And don’t think I won’t be checking in on you.”_

The sound of Stiles stomping back up the stairs wasn’t enough to cover the sound of him grumbling, and Erica grinned.

She sauntered over to the sidewalk, stopping to turn back to the Stilinski house one more time. She was unsurprised to see the Sheriff peering out the window at her. With a big grin, she waved at him, then started off down the street, taking the block at a brisk clip, then another one since people were coming home and someone else was looking out a window.

As soon as she hit a block with no one outside - or _looking_ outside - she toed off her heels, tangled her fingers through the straps, then took off at a lupine run.

It was so invigorating, running now. It wasn't just the increased speed or stamina - though those were certainly a bonus. But just being able to run free of worry, run free of being terrified of a seizure, run free of her parents' suffocating apathy...

She couldn't wait until she mastered a full shift and could run as a wolf, run for _real_.

In what felt like no time at all, she made it home, snuck across the backyard, and into her bedroom through the window. She pulled off the skirt and jacket, yanked on some sweatpants and her fluffy - bulky - houserobe, and made her way out of her room and downstairs, pausing only to dig a USB drive out of her desk.

Erica didn't actually expect anyone to be awake, right now - hence why she didn't waste time undoing her hair and make-up - but it couldn't hurt to be too careful.

"Mom?" she called out cautiously as she descended the stairs, just in case. "Dad?"

When she got no response, she kept going, scurrying through the living room and towards the office.

She kept an ear out for her parents as she snuck into Dad’s office. It only took a few tries to get into his computer, and she plugged in the USB as she started searching through his records for everything related to Jackson Whittemore.

She turned up a lot more than she expected.

~*~

"I won't be able to study with you, today," Allison murmured to Lydia towards the end of their chemistry class.

As usual, they finished before everyone else in the class. Lydia almost regretted not taking AP, but sharing this class with Allison meant they always had some time to whisper to each other, usually finalizing plans for after school.

Or cancelling them - like now.

"Why not?" she demanded.

"I got detention," Allison said, swallowing and not looking up from her worksheet.

"Ugh, did _everyone_ get detention today?" Lydia demanded.

"Sort of," Allison said. "There was a fight and Harris showed up and didn't want to hear anyone's side of the story, so he gave everyone detention."

Lydia glanced around the room. In front, she could see Stiles and Scott at another table - Scott writing, but Stiles talking. Most likely, Stiles was doing the actual mental leg work and Scott was merely writing down what he said, but who could know for sure. Somewhere behind her, she was sure Erica was perching on her stool, and at least two boys somewhere in the room would be nervously admiring her.

How Erica could change so much over one weekend was a mystery Lydia was still working on. Or, well, planning to work on - after she figured out what the hell was Jackson's problem, what Allison was hiding from her, and why Scott and Stiles were acting so weird lately.

And what was wrong with herself.

She didn't want to think about that, right now.

"What happened?" Lydia asked, trying to take her mind off her own problems. "I tried asking Stiles, but he wouldn't say anything."

"What about Jackson?"

With a flip of her hair, Lydia answered, "We're still not talking."

Allison nodded, distracted by her worksheet - despite the fact she was done, too.

"I was trying to talk to Jackson about something," she asked. "I went into the locker room, except he'd just gotten out of the shower. He tripped and fell, but Scott showed up and took it the wrong way. I guess Erica and Stiles heard the commotion, since they showed up right behind him."

Lydia frowned. "Tripped and fell?" she asked incredulously.

Allison didn't notice Lydia's disbelief, starting to quietly pack up her notebook, binder, and chem book. "Yeah, it was - kind of stupid. But since I was there, and I kind of started the fight - detention."

Lydia pursed her lips in thought.

After a moment, she finally asked, "Is this payback for the time I made out with Scott?"

With shocked-wide eyes, Allison turned to stare at her. "What?!" she hissed, glancing at Harris. Their teacher was helping someone else and not paying any attention to them.

"'He tripped and fell on me' is a cliche," Lydia said. "I'm not sure why you'd go after my ex-boyfriend, especially when-"

"I wasn't!" Allison cried out. Harris - and half of the rest of the class - turned to stare at them. "Sorry," Allison said sheepishly. Harris rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the pair he was helping. Everyone else looked at them warily.

Apparently, Allison and Lydia were turning into 'the crazy table'.

Whatever. They'd get over it.

Eventually.

"I wasn't," Allison repeated under her breath. "I honestly just wanted to talk to him. He's been avoiding me, and I figured if I cornered him in the locker room, he'd have no choice but to at least give me a minute."

"...oh," Lydia said.

"Lydia, please," Allison begged under her breath. "You have to believe me."

"I do," Lydia said. Before Allison could look relieved, though, she added, "Unfortunately."

Allison frowned, but before either of them could say anything, the bell rang. The class erupted into the organized chaos of everyone packing up and leaving the room as fast as they could.

Except for Allison and Lydia, despite the fact they were already packed and ready to go.

"What do you mean?" Allison asked, her voice now at a normal volume.

With half of a sigh, Lydia slid off of her stool and smoothed out her skirt. She shouldered her bag, made sure her outfit was still intact, and only then did she look up at the girl who was the closest thing to a best friend she had, right now.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Stiles trying to drag Scott out of the room. She wondered if Erica or Isaac were still around, but didn't really care.

"I came to your house when I needed to talk about something and you wouldn't give me the time of day," Lydia said. "Meanwhile, you go through the trouble of tracking down and cornering Jackson for the same reason. I believe you, Allison, when you say nothing happened between you and him and that it wasn't about me. I believe you, and that's the problem."

Before Allison could say a word, Lydia turned sharply on her new heels and walked away.

This wouldn't be the first time Lydia's lost a best friend. But god, she'd been hoping it would be the last.

She wondered why she still kept trying.

~*~

Derek was just leaving the grocery store when he got the call. He saw Erica's Caller ID picture just before he swiped at the green button, so he was shocked when he heard Stiles' voice answer with, "You need to get to hospital ASAP."

"Stiles?" Derek asked, actually pulling the phone away to double check. Yep - Erica's photo, Erica's number. "What are you doing with Erica's phone?"

"There was a thing at school, kanima attacked in detention, long story - but Erica got some of the venom and she started seizing or something," Stiles said. Derek listened, hearing the sound of sirens in the background. "Too much noise for us to just sneak her out, so the ambulances are taking us to the hospital. I don't - I don't know what to do."

Stiles sounded terrified - something Derek was startled to realize was a very foreign sound. The boy always got scared in the face of danger, but he usually did his best never to show it, instead facing danger with anger and determination.

Cursing under his breath, Derek shoved his groceries into the car before diving behind the wheel. "Just hold on, and if you can, make sure to get me at least a few moments alone with her. I can fix this."

"Yeah, that'll work out," Stiles said, voice dripping sarcasm and fear in equal measures. "Get a male former murder suspect in his mid-twenties a few minutes alone with a teenage girl in the middle of treatment for a seizure."

"Whose fault is it that I was a murder suspect?" Derek pointed out, peeling out of the parking lot and heading straight for the hospital.

Stiles sighed. "Just get there, all right?"

"On my way," Derek said, and hung up.

He could hear the ambulance sirens from what must have been miles away. He heard when they cut out because they reached the school. He didn't go to the school, though, instead going straight to the hospital, then past it and parking a few blocks away.

The next fifteen minutes were not _the_ most nerve-wracking in his life, but they still shook him to his core as he listened to the ambulance pull in. He was already getting ready to round into the emergency reception with some vague plan of kidnapping Erica to help her properly or something, and it was only seeing and hearing the familiar Jeep that stopped him. He sighed in relief when he saw Stiles and Scott leap out - even moreso when he realized Allison wasn't with them. He slid into a shallow corner as he waited, texting Scott to ask where Erica was and where they would be.

It took almost half an hour, and Scott texted updates as best as he could - which wasn't much, since he wasn't Erica's family. Luckily, Mrs. McCall was on-duty, and was _used to me checking on my friends in here_.

He was nearly clawing at his own flesh by the time Scott texted him a room number and how Derek could get up there. It took another ten minutes to be able to climb various walls and windows to get to the room without being seen. In the end, he found the room with their heartbeats and hints of their scents. He reached it and tapped on the glass.

Scott let him in, saying quietly, "Please tell me there's a way to help her fast...? My mom let us in to keep her company, but the doctor's coming to see her in a few minutes!"

Derek looked at the bed, where Stiles was trying to soothe Erica, who was shivering and writhing in the sheets. She was still dressed in her school clothes. There were two other beds in the room - but thankfully, both were empty.

"What happened?" he asked, stalking over to look at Erica himself, trying to understand from her scent and her state.

"Kanima in the library," Stiles said. "Ja- The kanima is being controlled by someone else, and they know we're onto them. The attack was to give us a message."

Derek's head snapped up at the slip-up. Gripping the plastic bed rail as tight as he could without breaking it, he asked, "Is Jackson the kanima?"

Stiles looked desperately at Scott, and that was all the answer Derek needed. He opened his mouth, but Scott was at his side, cutting him off.

"We're not going to let you kill him," Scott said. His own hand was gentle where it landed on the bed rail right next to Derek's - but that just made the clicking of his claws all the more ominous. "Not without trying to cure him, first."

"Cure?" Derek demanded. "Like you wanted to cure yourself?"

Scott opened his mouth, but this time it was Stiles cutting him off, snapping, "Guys! Erica. Seizure. Doctors and cops on the way!"

Derek narrowed his eyes at Scott, but turned sharply away. He studied Erica, and reached for her neck where the kanima usually struck. He grimaced at the cut - and at the realization as to just what was wrong with Erica.

"It's her healing ability," he said, taking her arm into his hands. "Fighting off the venom and fighting off the seizure. It's playing hell with her central nervous system and leaving both processes in limbo. She's not getting worse, but she get can't better."

"So how do we fix it?" Stiles said.

Derek swallowed. "Get her body to heal something else - something to force the magic away from her brain stem and spinal cord long enough to let them run their course or strong enough to start from scratch."

"...something else?" Stiles said. His face and shoulders fell in resigned dread as he figured out what that meant.

Scott's jaw was so tense it was in danger of becoming symmetrical again, but he nodded. "What can we do?"

Derek shut his eyes, already loathing himself for what he was about to ask.

"I hate to say this," he growled. "But hold her down, and be ready to gag her. I can heal her, fast, but it'll hurt. A lot."

"This feels so wrong," Scott said, looking up uncertainly at Derek. "On so many levels."

"This _is_ wrong on so many levels," Derek snapped. "So do it fast, because we're three boys about to hold down and gag a helpless girl, and we have no way of explaining why."

Scott leaned forward to press his weight down on Erica's shoulders. With a murmured count of three - two - one, Derek cursed every decision he ever made that lead to this moment as he snapped her arm.

Erica jerked, Scott straining to hold her down as Stiles clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle her keen. Thank god she wasn't conscious enough to scream.

He hated that this was even a thought he could have.

Before she could wake up, he immediately reset the broken bone, too - which had the doubled effect of throwing her healing factor into overdrive. For a brief moment, she went abruptly still, enough that Derek, in a panic, laid his ear down against her chest, just to be sure her heart was still beating.

It was, and a moment later, it ticked up just the slightest when Stiles murmured, "Erica?"

"Stiles?" she asked, sounding exhausted and surprised in equal measures. "Derek?"

Derek pulled away to look up to her opening eyes, nodding. "I'm here."

Erica smiled tiredly, then looked around herself, then at Stiles.

"I called Derek while we were waiting for the ambulances," Stiles explained. "The kanima got you in the neck with its tail when you were fighting it."

She swallowed.

"Thanks," she said. "You make a good Batman."

Scott looked as confused as Derek felt, both of them blinking in bewilderment. Stiles, however, smiled, eyes wet and lips wobbling as he nodded, reaching up to stroke some hair back from Erica's face. "And you're an amazing Catwoman. I can't believe you actually figured out how to fight in those heels."

"Used to practice," Erica murmured. "When I was little."

"It paid off," Stiles promised, clasping one of Erica's hands in both of his own.

Derek looked at Scott, but Scott still looked as lost as Derek felt.

"What happened after I seized?" Erica asked.

Stiles swallowed, glanced nervously up at Derek, but then decidedErica was more important.

Derek agreed.

"The kanima," Stiles started. He stopped, then started again. "It's Jackson. Whoever is controlling it is onto us. Jackson paralyzed you and Matt, then hissed at the rest of us to stay away, or Jackson would come after us next." He frowned. "It was really weird to hear Jackson talk about himself in third person."

"But why am I here?" Erica asked. "And what-"

"However the venom works, it's close enough to the parts of the brain or nervous system that have something to do with your seizures," Derek said. "Your healing factor went nuts. Tried to heal two big problems happening in the same place, couldn't heal either one."

"We broke your arm to jumpstart it," Stiles said.

We.

Stiles could have said 'he', just Derek, blaming him. But no. 'We'.

"Oh..." she looked over at Derek. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," Derek said. "I just hurt you. Stiles was the one who called me."

"Still," Erica said, twitching her hand until Derek grabbed it. "Glad you're my alpha."

God, if only she knew what a terrible alpha he really was. With a sigh, Derek leaned down to press his forehead to hers. "I - I can't stay, I'm not even supposed to be here."

Derek nuzzled his cheek to hers, then stood upright. His brow furrowed as he saw Scott glance between Derek and Erica in bewilderment. Well - he supposed that was understandable. Scott had no experience with affection from one werewolf to another.

What a depressing thought. But also a surprisingly explanatory one, now that he thought about it.

"Thanks," Erica repeated, smiling with an oddly knowing look in her eyes.

"I don't want to leave," he admitted. "You shouldn't be alone."

"Her family is on the way," Scott said. Derek could tell he was trying to be reassuring, but Derek snarled, startling both the boys.

"They're the reason why I don't want to leave," Derek snapped, looking down at the part of Erica's arm he'd just broken. It was dark with bruising, but that would be gone soon. Hopefully, everyone would be too focused on her seizure to think about X-raying her. "Even if this were a normal seizure, she deserves better than apathy and anger."

At that, Erica rolled her eyes - with fondness, not derision.

"Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, here, can keep me company once my parents show up," she said, tilting her head from Scott to Stiles. The former looked indignant, while the latter snorted in amusement. "I'll be fine. Promise."

Derek looked between Scott and Stiles, and-

He believed her.

"Thank you," he said. Both boys' eyes widened in shock, and Derek scowled. He wasn't that bad.

Was he?

Before he could ask, Erica and Scott both snapped up to the door, and Derek listened for what they'd heard.

"That's my cue," he said to a confused and irritated Stiles, striding to the window. He leaped onto the sill, looked down at the ledge, then looked back in. "When they ask you what happened-"

"There was a weird smell in the library," Stiles said. "And then Matt collapsed, Jackson got sick, and suddenly: boom." He gestured between himself and Scott. "We cooked this up when we realized the ambulances were outside and we wouldn't be able to get out of there."

"There was no fire," Derek pointed out. He frowned, wondering how they would pin everything on an explosion.

Stiles shrugged. "But there was nothing else, either, so that's all they've got. Besides, this means school will shut down for a week or so while they try to figure things out, which gives us all time to recover." He paused, then looked to Scott. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone, handing it to Scott. "Call Allison, and let her know the story."

From behind Stiles and in front of Scott, Erica smiled at Derek, looking oddly proud of Stiles. If he were being honest with himself, Derek could relate.

Instead of thanking them again, Derek managed to swing up just as two sets of footprints paused in front of the door to her room. Derek snapped the window closed with his heel as someone pressed down on the handle, and he was just out of sight as those two footprints walked in.

Just in time. And, as Derek listened, he frowned as he realized who it was that was accompanying the doctor.

_"Dad?"_ Stiles asked, as Sheriff Stilinski said, _"Stiles?"_ And then a moment later, _"Erica?!"_

_"Hi, Sheriff,"_ Erica murmured - and only half of that exhaustion was an act.

_"What happened?"_ the man demanded.

_"Sheriff,"_ the doctor said. _"If you can please wait a moment while I take a look at Miss Reyes' condition..."_

_"Yeah, yeah, right,"_ the Sheriff said. There was a scuff of movement - some form of body language, then. _"Sorry. Boys, let's go talk outside."_

_"I'm fine,"_ Erica insisted to her doctor.

Derek smiled sadly as he heard the two Stilinskis move across the room, Scott right behind them. Erica started playing the doctor around her little finger and insisting everything had only looked worse than it actually was.

He may not be able to trust Scott or Stiles, but strangely enough, he could still count on them to try and help anyone in need.

_"Okay, before we begin - how well do you know this girl?"_ the Sheriff demanded. Judging by the tone of his voice, he was addressing Stiles. _"Because I'd never even heard of her before this week, and suddenly she's sneaking into your bedroom and you're with her in the hospital?"_

_"It's, uh, complicated-"_ Stiles began.

_"She snuck into your room?!"_ Scott cut in.

Stiles let out the most forlorn sigh Derek had ever heard in his life, and he smirked at the thought of all the awkwardness Stiles was about to face.

With surprisingly less tension , Derek made his way down the side of the building, keeping out of sight and not bothering to come up with a way to come back again before Erica checked back out.

She was in good hands.

~*~

A week later, Danny breathed a sigh of relief as he started to back out of the security office, the computers already whirring back into sleep-mode. The off-beige carpet muffled his steps without leaving footprints behind, the perfect carpet for illicit activity.

An old, familiar rush of victory was just starting to pump through his veins at the realization he might actually get out of the administrative office without anyone seeing him-

"And what, exactly, are you doing here, young man?"

Danny froze.

Never mind, then.

Turning slowly, he fought not to flinch at Principal Argent standing in the doorway to his office, right by the security office entrance.

"Um, hi, sir," Danny said. "I wanted to ask, um, Mrs. Argent about, uh..." He rattled his brain. "Parking permits!"

"I see," Mr. Argent said. He smiled, but like he knew something Danny didn't. His proprietary gaze was...kind of creepy, actually. "And that necessitated you going into the security office?"

"I was looking for her," Danny said. "But I couldn't find her, so I'll come back later."

He started to turn to go away, but Mr. Argent shook his head. "I may be old, but I am not blind or deaf," he said. His voice made Danny's hair stand on their ends. "It's not a big office, Daniel - it is Daniel, right? It shouldn't have taken you twenty minutes to search for her. You wouldn't even need to step into it to look for her there."

Danny swallowed. "I...um..."

"Why don't you tell me the truth?" the man asked. He stepped forward until he was less a foot away from Danny - and standing in front of the only exit back out to the main hallway.

Biting his lip, Danny glanced back at the security office. "I just..." He took a deep breath. All the best lies had a bit of truth to them. "Everyone's talking about the gas leak explosion in the library, and I just thought..."

That everyone was lying about it. That there was no way everyone could be just fine after something like that. That there was something Jackson and Lydia and everybody else has been lying about for months.

That Danny was getting sick of being left out of the loop.

"If I can get the footage first," Danny said, going for his most charming smile possible. "My video channel's subscriber count would at least double, and my Friends lists everywhere else would shoot through the roof."

The principal raised an amused eyebrow as he clasped his hands behind his back, staring Danny down. "You were willing to break into our security office and steal confidential footage just to be more popular online?"

"Well...it sounds so bad when you put it like that," Danny admitted. And it was.

Thank god he wasn't actually that shallow.

Mr. Argent smiled, small and amused. "You know, attempting to break into offices you aren't authorized for is a serious infraction. As is hacking any school computers and taking video records without permission."

"I didn't take anything, though!" Danny objected. "There wasn't anything to take."

Mr. Argent nodded. "I know. We wanted to find out what happened, too. It seems the explosion from the gas leak must have knocked out the cameras."

Danny nodded along, even though he knew it was BS. "That would explain it. So there's really no footage?"

Mr. Argent shook his head, advancing forward again. "Though given that several of your friends were there, I'm surprised you would need it."

Between the reception counter and the diving wall between offices, Mr. Argent made the space almost claustrophobic. But stepping backwards away from the man would be...noticeable. "You are not unpopular, young man," Mr. Argent added.

Danny smiled wanly, wishing he could back away. Unfortunately, he got the feeling that if he did, Mr. Argent would ask why.

"I know," Danny said instead. "But I just...people can be pretty competitive online, and they're really big on proof like pictures or video, and I have so many computer restrictions as it is..."

"Yes, I heard," Mr. Argent said, smiling rather viciously for an old man. "I've seen the juvenile court orders, and I've been told you are not allowed into the media center without supervision."

"They dropped the charges!" Danny immediately protested, though out of habit rather than actual indignation.

"But the records haven't been sealed yet, and they won't be until you are eighteen," Mr. Argent said. "And you are standing on thin ice as it is."

As if he needed the reminder. God, his parents still brought up the old charges all the time, still viewed every moment on the computer with suspicion, still...

Still.

"So am I in trouble, then?" Danny asked, wondering if there was any point in imploring the man not to suspend him. Or worse. They couldn't expel for this...could they?

"Hmm..." A predatory smile crawled along his face as he clasped his hands behind his back. "Well, I remember being your age, long ago as it was. I always wanted my friends to think the best of me, too. And I know we couldn't capture any video of the library incident, which means you didn't actually take anything."

Yeah, Danny tried to break the rules, but he didn't actually _do_ it.

For once.

"So how about we only have a week's detention for going into the security office without authorization, and call it a day?" Mr. Argent said, clapping a congenial hand on Danny's shoulder.

The relief Danny felt at not getting suspended was mitigated by the desire to crawl out of his own skin under Mr. Argent's tight grip and tighter gaze. But Danny just nodded, desperate to get out of here. "Yeah, that - thank you, Mr. Argent. I really am sorry about this."

"I believe you," Mr. Argent said, with a tone of voice implying he really, really didn't. He shook Danny's shoulder as he said, "Just make sure I don't catch you trying to break in here again."

"You won't, Mr. Argent, I promise," Danny said. And it was true.

He would be smarter, next time.

"Good," the man said, pushing on Danny's shoulder to turn him around and patting his back. "Now, lunch will be over soon, so I suggest you go back to class. I will let Mr. Harris know about your detention."

"Right," Danny said, stepping towards the door as fast as possible without being rude. "Have a good day, Mr. Argent!"

He had never been so glad to get out of the office and away from a teacher. Or, well, principal.

Clutching the straps of his backpack, Danny wove his way through the students meandering towards their lockers. He kept an eye out for a head of dark curls, unsurprised to find the cute boy waiting by his locker.

Matt actually smiled when he saw Danny, but then his smile started to fall as he took in Danny's expression.

"What happened?" he asked, leaning in as Danny started opening his locker. "Did you get it?"

Danny bit his lip. "Mr. Argent caught me."

"What?!" Matt glanced around them, then said with a lower voice, "What did he - are you in trouble?"

Shaking his head, Danny said, "No, I - he caught me on my way out, but he only gave me a week's detention. Nothing too serious, and I can probably even keep my parents from finding out."

"Oh..." Matt cocked his head to the side as he crossed his arms and leaned against the lockers next to Danny's. "He just let you go?"

"Yeah, after he lectured and...and stuff..." Danny pursed his lips, remembering Mr. Argent's unsettling gaze and tone of voice. "God, no wonder his daughter turned into a psychopath. I'm more surprised Allison and her dad didn't end up the same way."

Matt looked sympathetic. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Danny said. "He's just creepy."

"...so did you get the video?" Matt asked a moment later. He seemed caught between wanting to know more about Mr. Argent and wanting to know about what happened to himself in the library.

"No, but only because there was no footage to take," Danny said. He switched out his books between his backpack and his locker - and put away his incriminating laptop. "He said that there was no video because the explosion knocked out the cameras. But I was in the system...and someone deleted it."

Matt's eyes widened. "What?!"

"Yeah," Danny said, shouldering his backpack and shutting his locker. "I took a look around when I couldn't find anything, and...well. Are you familiar with how security cameras, time-stamps, and logging systems work?"

Shaking his head, Matt fell into step beside Danny as they made their way to their next classes, right across the hall from each other. "Most of what I know about computers is photography stuff."

"Well, long story short, the physical cameras were knocked out _after_ the explosion. They did take footage, but the last few minutes of footage on all the library cameras are just gone."

"So...someone deleted the footage of the explosion?" Matt asked. "And Mr. Argent is covering it up?"

Danny nodded. "Are you sure you don't remember anything?"

"Positive," Matt said as they went up the stairs. He sounded apologetic about it. "One minute I was sorting books, next minute I was in an ambulance. My head still hurts from the concussion."

"Headaches all around," Danny muttered under his breath. At Matt's confused look, he added, "Jackson's been having migraines."

Matt pursed his lips in something that looked like frustration. Huh. "He went missing, after the explosion."

"He said he doesn't remember anything, either," Danny said. "Scott found him unconscious outside the school, but he didn't have any head-wounds."

"Maybe he inhaled something?" Matt asked. "The others are saying there was a weird smell."

"Probably," Danny admitted. "I just - he's already been having migraines and blackouts, and this on top of that?" He frowned, slowing as he neared their classrooms. "And he shouldn't have even been there, anyway. He's got a restraining order against Scott and Stiles after they freaking kidnapped him!"

"Wasn't it some kind of prank?" Matt asked, eyeing his own classroom and his watch.

Danny sighed. "I don't know. Stiles is kind of an asshole and I can see him doing it, but Scott?" He shook his head. "There's something weird going on around here, Matt."

"You're telling me," Matt said. He jerked his head towards his classroom, then winced. Right - concussion. "See you after school?" he said, putting his hand on Danny's shoulder. The same shoulder Mr. Argent had been patting earlier. His touch was much more appreciated. "We can finish studying for the chemistry midterm."

This time, Danny smiled, genuine and hopeful. "Yeah. See you then."

~*~

A week after the gas explosion, Stiles walked into Finstock's classroom just in time to hear Scott tell several people and their smartphones, "I don't know!"

"Don't know what?" Stiles quipped, taking his seat next to Scott.

"How did the library explode, last week?" Harley demanded, turning her phone from Scott to Stiles. Scowling, Stiles shoved it away. "What? C'mon, we all wanna know-"

"Well we don't know," Stiles said. "We were in detention, there were some funny smells, people started passing out, then things went boom. Now stop asking."

Scott gave Stiles a grateful look, but then he seemed to notice Stiles' grimace. "Everything okay, dude? You look upset."

"I am upset," Stiles snapped. He glared at the people listening in, some unsubtly still recording with their phones, hoping to find out the juicy gossip about an actual _explosion_ at school. Well, joke's on them, because in the wake of that level of chaos, life has been almost boring for a week. The most interesting thing was- "My dad just tried to give me some weird 'safe sex' talk or something."

One of the boys with the camera phones turned away, bored. The rest of the students backed off, since there wasn't anything interesting about some kid getting a lecture from their parents. Though Harley seemed to still be recording. Nosy bitch.

Scott smiled at Stiles, amused. "Really?" he asked, just as a few more students walked in - including Erica, Boyd waving her off from the door before heading off to his own classes.

"Really," Stiles grumbled. He glared at Erica, the cause of his misery. "He even threatened to have the pharmacist give me another lecture about it while I got condoms, Scott, it was bad."

Erica wasn't at all perturbed by the subtle blame Stiles was throwing her way. On the contrary, she grinned. Stiles had the sinking feeling that instead of irritating her like he'd hoped, he just encouraged her.

"You should get the flavored ones," Erica said, winking at him as she sauntered past his and Scott's seats and took an empty one behind them.

"What happened to ribbed condoms being 'the best thing ever'?" Stiles snapped.

"'Best thing' doesn't mean 'only good thing'," Erica said. She gave him a smarmy grin to rival the one she'd shot at him when Derek picked her up from school in his stupid Camaro. Then she turned away and completely ignored him, pulling some papers out of her bag.

Stiles sighed and turned his attention towards his own backpack, only to realize there was a weird bubble of silence around him. Scott was muffling his laughter, while Harley was gaping, the phone still pointing at him.

Just as Stiles was about to demand 'what?', he went over the last thirty seconds and realized what it sounded like.

"Oh, my god!" Stiles cried out. "No, it's not - we're not like that."

"It sure sounded like it," Harley said, pressing down on something on her phone and turning to start tapping and typing furiously.

"No, no-" Stiles tried to reach for her phone, but her friend Anna pushed him back, also looking incredulously between Stiles and Erica. "It's not what you think!" Stiles cried out.

No one believed him. Even Scott, the traitor, was hunched over in badly-suppressed laughter. Erica looked...smug?

Stiles was never going to understand girls.

With a forlorn sigh, Stiles dropped back into the stool. He realized with horror that even Finstock was looking between Stiles and Erica with narrowed eyes. Thankfully, he deemed teenaged sex lives to be too disturbing to pay attention to. With an eyeroll, he turned back to the graph he was drawing on the chalkboard.

Stiles folded his arms and dropped his head onto them, groaning.

"Dude," Scott asked, still snickering. "Why're you so upset? One of the hottest girls in school isn't correcting people who think she slept with you."

"But she _didn't_ ," Stiles grumbled. "No one has slept with me. No one will, probably, for a long time."

"If you're sure," Scott said shaking his head.

Another hush settled over the students, one that was familiar in a more painful way.

Stiles didn't even have to turn around to know Allison was walking into the room.

It was a half-hushed bubble that marked her entrance into any room at school. Small, but noticeable, Stiles didn't even look up as he pulled his bag out of the chair he'd been reserving for her.

Most of the time, the brief hush would fade as people went back to their own conversations and ignored her.

Not today.

"Hey, Allison," Harley said, much to Stiles' surprise. He sat back up to stare at her. "Do _you_ know what happened in the library?"

Allison pursed her lips, and glanced at Harley and her phone over her shoulder without actually turning around. "No," she said.

Anna narrowed her eyes. "Did _you_ blow it up?"

Scott seemed to choke on air as Allison sharply turned her head to stare at Harley and Anna in shock. "What?!"

"Wouldn't exactly be the first time, coming from your family," Anna continued.

Allison froze, and Stiles tugged at her hand.

"Don't give them anything," he said, and Allison faced forward again.

"Come on," Harley said, though glancing around at Finstock. There was enough chatter filling up the front row that the man didn't notice them, anymore. Or he was just actively trying not to listen to them after Erica's little stunt. "Were you trying to follow your aunt's footsteps?"

"Shut up!" Scott snapped, looking like he was one step away from wolfing out on them. Allison looked a step away from crying, but continued to ignore them. Everyone else stared nervously at Allison, but no one stepped in.

Of course not.

Allison had gone from 'pretty' to 'pariah' overnight. Lydia was the only popular girl who was willing to be seen with Allison. The only reason Scott wasn't also constantly fighting for her was because of the rest of the Argents forcing them apart. Yet even their reputations were taking a big hit - especially since Lydia's social standing was plummeting from her own mental breakdown and three-day naked run in the woods.

"Why?" Harley demanded, shoving her phone into Scott's face. "You've heard about what Kate Argent did. Don't tell us you don't care."

"Allison. Isn't. Kate," Scott all-but-growled. Allison screwed her eyes shut, like she was trying to hold in her tears. "So leave her alone."

"Are you sure she isn't Kate?" Anna asked, poking them for a response. She had no idea what kind of sleeping monster she was poking at. "Don't tell us you didn't feel sick reading about the Arson Argent's crimes-"

"Hey!" Stiles snapped, leaning over in his chair to glare at Harley and Anna directly. "If you felt sick just reading about her, imagine being a helpless kid _living_ with her!"

That caused another weird hush, and of course that was when Finstock turned around.

For a brief moment, it was like everyone was frozen. Harley and Anna went from goading to speculative, as did many of the others in the room.

Then Isaac walked in, pausing halfway to his desk as he realized the entire class was staring at Allison.

Allison snapped.

She leapt out of her seat, the desk rattling as she ran out the door.

"Argent!" Finstock yelled. "Get back in here!

Scott stood up, but Stiles clamped down on his shoulder and used him to leverage himself up. "Cameras!" he hissed. They could get away with Scott and Allison sitting close together in some classes, but any more than that would spell out pain and imminent death.

Swallowing down his mix of frustration and grief, Scott nodded and sat back down. Stiles ran out - ignoring Finstock yelling his name - and looked around just in time to see Allison's hair disappear around a corner. The bell rang, prodding the few stragglers in the hall to also start running to their classes. Stiles dodged them as he ran after Allison. He paused when he saw her disappear into the girl's bathroom. But he remembered the look on her face, so he took a deep breath and yelled, "Boy coming in!" as he pushed open the bathroom door.

Wow, the girl's bathroom was clean. No wonder girls would spend so much time in here.

There didn't seem to be anyone else around. He heard only the sound of Allison crying in the stall furthest from the door, which was also the only one closed, but he didn't see any feet on the floor.

With only a moment's pause in front of her stall, Stiles called softly, "Allison?"

There was a sniffle, then finally, Allison's designer boots landed on the ancient tile. Some shuffling, and Stiles took a step back when the stall door opened. She stepped out, eyeliner smudged and tears cutting tracks through her perfectly made-up face.

Stiles got sudden déjà vu to the night he found Lydia crying, and tried not to wince as he realized he never came back for her. He was sure she found someone to talk to, though.

"Listen, I'm sorry about that," Stiles said. "I was just trying to get them off your back, and I figured we could use the school's rumor mill-"

"It's not that," Allison said, walking past him to grab a paper towel from the sink, wiping at her face even as she was still crying.

Stiles frowned. "...then what is it?" he asked.

Allison shut her eyes. For a moment, with her arms braced against the sink, her head fell between them. Her falling hair covered her face as she took several deep, shaky breaths, and muttered something in French under her breath.

Then she stood up, wiping away at her face. The make-up was smudged and her eyes were red, but the tears were all gone.

It was kind of creepy, actually.

"It's that they're not wrong," she said, voice so hoarse that if Stiles didn't know better, he would assume she'd been screaming for hours on end.

Then again, if even half of what Allison said about Hunter training was true, she might have done so not too long ago. And given what Stiles had seen of Hunters thus far, he didn't think she was exaggerating in even the slightest.

Actually, given that she was usually telling Scott as well as him, she probably even downplayed it.

"That's exactly what my family is trying to do," Allison continued, sounding sick - both literally and metaphorically. "They want me to be a replacement Kate."

She practically spat out her aunt's name, with venom that shocked Stiles.

"And - they just...they make everything sound so reasonable. We've both seen what kind of monsters werewolves can be, and I've been learning about what's out there. But then they try to make it like werewolves are _nothing but_ monsters, and I know Scott's not like that, but if they're wrong about Scott, then what else are they wrong about? And what happened when you had to watch over him during his first full moon, and Peter Hale, and-" She hiccuped. "She wasn't the Arson Argent, she was my Aunt Kate, and I- half the time, I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare, for it all to be some kind of horrible dream. I keep waiting and waiting and waiting and I never seem to wake up!"

She shouted that last bit, and Stiles winced, which made her take a step back in apology.

"I'm sorry," she began.

"Don't be," Stiles said. "You..." Stiles shook his head, trying to untangle this glimpse into her head. "You're dealing with a lot."

"I shouldn't be," Allison said, clutching at the sink with one hand but releasing the other, turning to face Stiles. "I just - god, I can't even tell Scott, because I don't know what he will and won't tell Derek. And on top of that, he just - he tries to be sympathetic. I don't know what's worse. If he doesn't believe himself and he's just lying about how he's sure my parents mean well in order to cheer me up...or if he does believe it and he's honestly deluded himself into thinking my family means well."

"Both," Stiles answered. At her confused look, Stiles added, "Scott...looks for the best in everyone. He knows it's not always there, he just tries to ignore that as much as he can." Stiles shrugged. "And even then, he's convinced everyone can redeem themselves and everyone should have a new chance. Comes with the territory."

"What territory?" Allison asked, clutching her paper towel clump in a white-knuckled grip.

"Let's just say that me and Jackson weren't kidding when we said Scott used to have a temper," Stiles said. "His therapist spent two years drilling it into his head that he didn't have to be defined by the bad stuff he did as a kid. He could get better as long as he was genuinely sorry for what he did and tried to change his behavior, then he didn't have to be 'the bad kid' forever." Stiles frowned. "Or maybe that was his priest, before the McCalls stopped going to church."

Allison burst out laughing. Before Stiles could count that as a victory, though, her laughter started to dissolve back into crying.

"There was no 'redeeming' my aunt," she said, shaking her head. She wasn't even bothering to wipe the tears away, anymore. "And my mom and my grandpa aren't sorry. My dad _is_ but he isn't changing, he isn't - he never even says 'no' to my mom, even though he's supposed to."

"Supposed to?" Stiles asked.

"It's his job!" she cried out. "It's - his role in the clan is supposed to be the guy who challenges the Huntress, who stops her if she's doing something stupid or bad, he or vets her plans to make them better or-" Allison swallowed. "But it's not - it's supposed to be my dad, but he's not doing that for my mom, and my grandpa is basically taking over his job and instead of telling my mom to back down, they're encouraging each other, and half the time people are saying Gerard is my mom's co-Huntress because he has that much control over everything. And it's like Kate never left or she just got even worse because that's what he is, he is like Kate but worse and...and..."

Allison sniffed again, immediately wiping at her face. "She was my aunt. And my parents - they don't..." Allison shook her head. "God, my mom thinks she had the right idea! And my dad said that what Kate did was wrong, that she murdered innocent werewolves and humans, but he just - he just goes along with everything my mom and my grandpa tell him to do. I don't - it's like he's scared of them, and if _he's_ scared of them, then...then..."

Then Allison must be terrified.

For lack of anything to say, Stiles held his arms wide open. Allison collapsed into his arms, burying her face in his neck and latching onto him.

She clung onto him like someone who hadn't had anyone to cling to in a while, which made sense. Allison didn't want to scare Scott, didn't want to shoulder Scott's feelings as well as her own, and didn't want to risk some vulnerability getting back to Derek. And outside of them, there wasn't anyone else she could turn to - her family were the problem. Her only other friend was Lydia, who Allison wanted to protect and shelter as much as Stiles did - which was 'as much as possible'.

Now that Stiles thought about it, it was no wonder Allison was such a wreck. The real question was how she hadn't snapped, sooner.

Stiles wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into a tight hug. He didn't say anything - for once, he had nothing to say. There was nothing he could say to make anything better, not now. He tried to channel everything about his dad's hugs into the one he was giving now. The solidity of every embrace, the way his dad always felt like a rock in the storm - even though Stiles knew he wasn't. They could both pretend, just for a moment.

"We're-" Allison hiccuped and said, with a shaky chuckle, "We're going to get more detention, aren't we?"

"Yup," Stiles said.

"...do you want to go back, now?" she asked.

He could still hear the thickness of unshed tears in her voice, so he said, "Nope."

She didn't refute this, and Stiles could feel her relief as she slumped into his embrace. He held on even tighter, letting her cry out several months' worth of frustration and fear.

Stiles wasn't Allison's family - which was the last place she needed any affection from, anyway.

But he tried to be the next best thing: her friend.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good or bad, let me know what you think!


	4. 208 - Raving (Pt. 1/2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris and Danny's frustrations grow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies if this chapter seems awkward. This was originally supposed to be the last chapter that covered the whole episode in one go, but I split it in half to be able to get something out on New Year's Day. These scenes were originally meant to set up the second half of the chapter. I hope it still works out okay as a 'standalone' update. :)

~*~

Chris watched Allison hurry away to the bathroom down the hall from the morgue, badly suppressing the tears in her eyes. With a sigh, he and Ulrich re-locked the morgue and hurried out of there. They split up and made their separate ways to the hospital garage.

Allison had driven here when Chris asked to meet her. He doubted she wanted to be alone with him, right now. He didn't blame her one bit.

He realized, as he got into the car, just how much he hated himself.

"The kanima is Jackson Whittemore," he reported, anyway.

"Good," Dad crooned immediately from the back seat. Ulrich climbed in a few moments later, and Chris drove them out of there. As he was leaving, he saw Allison walking towards her car.

She was crying.

"You really did a number on her," said Ulrich. The man turned in his seat to watch Allison climb into her car. The amused look on his face was a painful reminder that this man had always listened to Kate more than he'd ever listened to Chris.

"You did a good job," Dad answered. "Jackson is a friend of hers. You did good work in getting her to give him up."

Chris clenched his teeth and his grip on the wheel at the same time.

"Do you even remember that she's your granddaughter?" Chris demanded.

Dad's voice chilled Chris' spine when he answered, "I remember she's the next Huntress of our family."

The only reason Chris didn't shut his eyes against the burning was because he was still driving.

"She said she'd gotten the page on kanimas translated by someone who knows Archaic Latin," Chris said. "And the translation says the kanima needs a master. Even if the Whittemore boy is the one killing, someone else is making him do it - and we have no idea who."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," Dad promised. "Right now, we need to stop the bleeding wound before we worry about getting the bullet out."

Chris had a bad feeling in his gut as they drove - one that told him that neither the kanima nor its master were the real problem, here.

He couldn't help but remember that werewolves can't heal if a silver bullet or arrowhead is still inside them. Dad would never have pulled a bullet out of a werewolf if he could help it. Chris got a sick feeling in his gut that he wasn't going to start now.

Bullets had always been an Argent family specialty.

When they got home, Chris let Dad go talk to Vic as he went upstairs to the office. He logged into the computer, went to the inventory program, started trying to figure out what they would need tonight...

...and found himself browsing travel websites soon after.

He needed to get Allison out of here, away from all this. He'd tried so hard to protect her until she was old enough to protect herself, and failed spectacularly at that.

Maybe he could still rescue her, though.

"Do you know what to get?" Dad asked from the doorway - the one Chris had stupidly left open.

He tensed, doing his best not to flinch. As Vic walked into the room, Chris barely closed his browser before she came up behind him.

"Working on it," Chris answered, starting to sort through the pop-ups for the different inventory categories.

He had no doubt Vic loved Allison as least as much as Chris did - but she'd always been desperate to prove herself in the clan, and to the Argent family. Chris loved her, but he knew he couldn't count on her.

Not this time.

Not even for Allison.

~*~

After the last bell rang, Danny all but ran out to the parking lot - he needed to hurry up and wait. Luckily, the well-washed Porche he was looking for all but gleamed in the lot of student cars.

He only had to wait ten minutes. And for five of those, Jackson lurked by the main doors of the school, apparently hoping to wait out Danny. When he did finally stalk out, it was with a tense jaw and a tight grip on his backpack strap.

"Dude!" Danny called out, before Jackson even reached the car. "Where the hell were you? You missed practice!"

"That's none of your business," Jackson ground out, coming to a halt by the hood of the Porche. "Now get off my car."

Danny crossed his arms, leaning even further back against the driver's side door. "Not until you tell me where you were."

"...I don't remember," Jackson started.

"Bull!" Danny snapped.

"And even if I did, it's none of your business!" Jackson finished, all but shouting.

"Yeah, it is," Danny said, unfolding his arms and shifting his weight. "Because when you go missing, people ask _me_. Because when you missed practice, Coach told _me_ to tell you not to miss any more this close to the championship. Because of who your best friend is. Do you remember? It's _me_!"

It took him a moment to realize he'd stood up completely, pushing away from the car in a desperate attempt to loom over Jackson. Unfortunately, it was a moment too long. Jackson reached over and yanked the door open - one which he must've unlocked remotely. Danny hip-checked it shut. "NO!" he shouted, not caring about the students standing two cars over, staring at them.

"Danny," Jackson pleaded.

That stopped him.

Because Jackson was-

Well.

_Jackson._

He was quite possibly the cockiest asshole ever to walk the halls of Beacon Hills High School. He never stopped acting like he thought he was better than everyone. And unless he was trying to sweet-talk someone, he never said 'please'.

Jackson Whittemore was incapable of begging for anything.

Until now.

Danny looked his angry best friend up and down.

"...you're not kidding," he realized, his gut sinking through the asphalt beneath his feet. "You really don't remember, do you?"

"That's none of your business," Jackson repeated, his firm voice shaking. "Now stop blocking my car."

Slowly, Danny slid back, freeing the door to Jackson's car, but not pushing away from it.

"Why don't you remember?" Danny demanded. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong," Jackson started, reaching for the handle again.

"Does it have to do with what happened to Lydia?" Danny demanded. "Or - after?"

Jackson frowned, fingers resting against the handle, but not opening his car door. "What do you mean, 'after'?"

Danny crossed his arms again. "Kate Argent died, but other people are still getting killed. What are the odds we just coincidentally have two serial killers in this town, huh?" He reached out to poke Jackson in the chest. "Something else is going on - something weird and something big. Stiles and Scott are in the middle of it, again - and they kidnapped _you_."

Jackson's jaw clenched. "I had a migraine," he lied, opening the car door and sliding into his car.

Danny didn't let him settle in the seat. He wrapped a hand around Jackson's bicep and yanked him back out, nearly clipping Jackson's head just before slamming him against the backseat window.

"The hell you did!" Danny snapped. He opened his mouth to try and lay out all of Jackson's bullshit in one go, but before he could, Jackson brought his arm up and managed to elbow Danny right in the shoulder, slamming him against the decades-old sedan parked right next to the Porche. Danny's backpack dug into his kidneys as what felt like a small train slammed into his shoulder.

Danny shouted in pain, crumpling between the two cars, blinking back spots of black in his vision as Jackson scrambled into the Porche.

"Stay out of it!" Jackson shouted at him, before slamming the door shut.

When the Porche roared to life, Danny scrambled back, pulling his legs away from the car. In Jackson's current mood, Danny had no doubt the other boy would run over Danny's foot. He might even pay the medical bills as some demented form of spite.

Jackson turned in his seat and looked backwards as he backed out, until he was far enough to look forward again.

When he did, Danny's breath caught at the look on his face.

Jackson was terrified.

Danny opened his mouth to yell after him, but scrambling up made his back and his shoulder freeze up, tensing half his body as his nerves lit up like a wildfire. By the time he loosened up and was able to blink his way through the pain, Jackson's Porche was gone.

For a few moments, Danny just blinked stupidly from where he was sprawled across the empty parking spot, wondering-

"What the hell was _that_?!"

Danny slowly turned his head to see Coach Finstock jogging up to him, coming from the direction of the teachers' parking lot.

"Coach?" Danny asked, confused.

"What just happened?" Coach slowed to a halt, and reached a hand down toward Danny. With a groan, Danny let himself be pulled up, wincing when his backpack pulled against his shoulder. "Why was Jackson attacking you?"

"I..." Gingerly, Danny readjusted the weight of his backpack, so they weren't on top of what Danny was sure was about to be some spectacular bruising. "I asked him why he missed practice. Where he was."

"And?" Coach asked.

Danny looked past Coach, towards the gate between the student parking lot, and the front street to the school.

"He doesn't remember," Danny said.

Coach opened his mouth, but Danny shook his head, turned, and walked away. He had no idea what his face looked like, but given that Coach Finstock was currently not bothering to chase after him and demand answers, Danny could guess how bad it was.

Gripping his backpack straps tight, Danny stalked back to the school building - the entrance, to be exact.

He had a deal to make.

Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long.

"Hey, Stiles!" he called out, when Scott and Stiles walked out the door. Both boys turned around. "You still need those rave tickets?" he asked. "I'll give them to you if you tell me what's wrong with Jackson."

Scott's eyes widened. Stiles' jaw dropped in shock, but then he blinked and shook his head.

"Um - thanks? But no thanks."

When Danny just stared incredulously, Scott added, "We got tickets. And, um, we don't know what's wrong with Jackson."

Danny glared at them. "You mean besides you two kidnapping him?"

Scott winced, and Stiles shot him a nasty smile.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Besides that." Stiles looped an arm through Scott's and said, "C'mon, bro - we gotta get ready for tonight."

Stiles practically frogmarched Scott towards the ancient jeep lurking two rows from where Jackson's Porche had been parked. Danny continued to glare at them, but given what just happened in the parking lot, he didn't follow them.

With an angry grunt bursting out from low in his throat, he turned around to head towards his own car.

A few yards away, Matt hesitantly waved at him. "I, uh - I was going to ask you if...never mind."

"What?" Danny snapped. At Matt's face, Danny took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he said. "You're not the one I'm mad at. What's up?"

"It's nothing," Matt said, shaking his head. "Based on - that." He gestured between Danny, and the jeep that was just starting to pull out of its parking space. "I don't think I should-"

"What?" Danny repeated.

With a wince, Matt said, "I was going to ask if you still needed someone to go with you to the rave, tonight."

Danny blinked in surprise. "What?" he asked again - this time, bewildered instead of irritated.

Looking almost sheepish, Matt said, "Apparently, Isaac Lahey beat up Andrew Rodriguez and Seth Taylor for their tickets. I'd already given one of my tickets to someone else, but Andrew offered me a pretty good amount of money to get the one ticket I had left, and I guess... I remembered you mentioning to Stiles, earlier, that you still didn't have someone to go with. So I sold mine, figuring..."

Danny smiled. "No, man, it's cool." He took another deep breath. "And that was a good choice to make, because you were right."

Matt blinked. "Are...are you sure?"

With a firm nod, Danny said, "I'm sure." He happily slipped off his backpack to reach into his bag and pull out the extra ticket. He could swear his heart skipped a beat when Matt's fingers brushed his own when he took the ticket. Danny grinned and asked, "Pick you up at your place tonight, nine-sharp?"

With a playful smile, Matt shook his head. "I'm gonna be in the area to pick up something..." He gestured towards his camera. Danny wasn't surprised to hear Matt would have to run all over town to pick up parts for a camera that nice. "I can just meet you there." He reached up to pat Danny on the shoulder. Leaning in, his smile turned sly as he said, "So I'll see you tonight."

Okay, Danny knew it was stupid for his heart to flutter the way it did. But he nodded in time with it as Matt, with a wave, jogged off to the photography club meeting.

Danny was still reeling from Jackson too much to have a skip in his step as he made his way to his car - but his footsteps were still a lot lighter than they had been just moments before.

At least something went well, today - and Danny had a good feeling about tonight.

~*~

Chris' voice almost echoed in the giant basement as he laid out the plan for the ambush at the rave.

"When Allison has Jackson's location," he said, buckling the utility belt around his waist. "And has determined him to be at the optimal point where we can take him down, she'll signal me."

He glanced at Allison. "'Optimal' meaning as far away from the crowd as possible." Then, he turned his attention to everyone else assembled.

"There will be _no_ collateral damage, tonight," he demanded. Dad raised an eyebrow, while all the other Hunters had an impassive look on their faces as they nodded.

Sensing enough agreement, he looked at Allison and jerked his head up the stairs. "Go ahead," he said.

With a mournful nod, Allison quietly got up and trotted back upstairs. Victoria would help her get ready for the night up in her room.

When Chris turned his attention back to everyone else, Dad looked even more amused.

"As willing a participant as she seems," Dad said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm. "Your young protege, there, also seems to be under the impression that we are planning a trap."

Holstering a gun, Chris looked up in surprise. "'Protege'?" he asked. "She's my _daughter_."

"And your daughter seems to think we're only planning a trap."

Chris narrowed his eyes at Dad. "Isn't that what we're doing?"

Dad huffed in amusement. He reached down to pick up a switchblade, looking between all the Hunters assembled, then focusing back on Chris.

"Let's be perfectly clear," he said, looking pointedly at Chris, and holding up the switchblade. "You don't _trap_ a creature this dangerous..." Chris barely suppressed a flinch when the blade sprung out. "You _kill_ it."

Chris stared at Dad in shock.

"We're killing the boy?" he cried out.

"Of course!" Dad said, with that smile that made Chris feel like a scared little kid again. "Huntress's orders."

None of the other Hunters seemed perturbed by this.

As the men turned back to their equipment, Chris stormed upstairs. He reached Allison's room, and waited just outside it.

"...and make it easier for you to reach your knife," Victoria said, concluding something. A glance inside revealed several dresses strewn around the room, with Allison holding one in particular.

"Okay," his baby girl answered hoarsely.

Victoria stepped out of the room, closing the door behind her and heading towards their study. As soon as the door to the study was closed, she asked, "Yes?"

"We're killing the Whittemore boy?" Chris demanded. Again.

"Of course," Vic answered, raising her eyebrow at Chris like he was being slow on the uptake.

"Didn't you read the beastiary?" Chris protested. "The kanima needs a master, and we don't even know who that is yet-"

"What does it matter?" Vic asked. "Once we kill the kanima, the master can't use it to kill-"

"That doesn't mean they'll _stop_ killing-"

"But it won't be with supernatural means," Victoria said. "At which point, it will no longer be our concern." She clasped her hands in front of her. "Our only concern is the kanima, and as soon as we kill it, our part is done."

Chris crossed his arms so Victoria wouldn't see his clenched fists.

"Him," he reminded her. "Once we kill _him_." Victoria rolled her eyes as she turned towards the door. "You remember that the kanima is a person, right?"

She paused.

"...it used to be," she said simply. "And now it's not."

With that pronouncement, she strode out of the study, disappearing down the stairs. Presumably, off to figure out how to murder a teenage boy that was stuck in situation he had no control over.

Chris stared after her, gut-punched to realize that without him noticing, Victoria had become as deluded and hateful as Dad.

As Kate.

And they were trying to do the same to Allison.

Swallowing, Chris browsed the bookshelf until he found the high school handbook with a little cartoon tornado on the front. He flipped through until he found the calendar, and skimmed down until he found the absolute last day of school.

Then he got on the computer and bought plane tickets to France for the day after that.

He prayed that by then, it wouldn't be too late.

~*~

Outside the rave, Stiles kept a tight grip on his pathetic little handful of dust as he used his free hand to pull out his phone.

Of course, today just being Stiles' _lucky_ day, he got Deaton's voicemail.

"Deaton, you've gotta pick up and help me," Stiles said. "I've got 50 feet of ash-line left to make, but I'm out. I don't know what to do, and I'm just standing out here and I'm all alone and I'm hearing gunfire and werewolves and I'm standing here like a freakin' idiot and I'm all by myself with a handful of magic fairy dust and I don't have enough. Okay?"

He shut his eyes, already feeling latent humiliation at his useless rambling, and hung up before he could make it any worse.

Stiles just stared helpless between the line of mountain ash, and the pathetic handful in his, well, hand. God, how was he supposed to-

"Believe," he muttered. "How the hell is that supposed to..."

He trailed off, as he spotted a familiar sticker on one of the cars haphazardly parked nearby.

_Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Einstein_

It was just a stupid sticker handed out by the school district...

...but what if it was right?

Swallowing and shutting his eyes, Stiles took a deep breath as he prayed to be right.

"Deaton," he muttered into the air, and holding out his hand over the line. "If you were just being a cryptic bastard and I die tonight, I am coming back and haunting your ass for eternity."

He started pouring out the mountain ash, while walking forward, because there was enough for this, damnit.

There _was_.

How much was really needed to make it work, anyway? Did the line really need to be two or three inches thick? If it just needed to be a closed loop, it could be just a few _molecules_ thick and still work, right?

He didn't need more mountain ash, he already had enough. The line just needed to be thinner.

And if Deaton was right, Stiles didn't even need to touch it to make it thinner.

He believed-

No.

Stiles was the son a cop, a sheriff - well, a former sheriff, because Stiles just got his dad fired for-

No. This was not the time to think about that.

Stiles was the son of a cop. He was raised not to just 'believe' things. Maybe that worked for other people, but that wouldn't work for him.

He took another step forward, and another, and kept going - not because he believed he had enough, but because he _knew_ he had enough.

And when he opened his eyes and looked down, he turned out to be right.

With a whoop of victory, Stiles jumped up with his fist in the air. He couldn't be a good son and he couldn't be a good friend, but goddamn, he could do _this_.

He nearly dropped his phone in his excitement, he pulled it out of his pocket so fast. He re-dialed Deaton with shaking hands, still grinning down at the innocuous line of black dust on the ground.

"Never mind," he said, not bothering to mask his excitement. "I got it."

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!


	5. 208 - Raving (Pt. 2/2)

~*~

Danny's bruises from Jackson's outburst throbbed in time with the music as he wove his way through dozens of dancing bodies, trying to find Matt.

Instead, he found Erica and Isaac carrying away what looked like Jackson - barely conscious, if at all.

"...ecstasy," Danny pronounced, remembering the way the three of them had been dancing earlier. It didn't sound or feel right, but it was the only thing that made sense. Then he frowned in thought. "Overdose?" he questioned.

He started to follow them - which, of course, is when he stumbled across Matt.

Dancing with Allison.

For a moment, it was like his heart stopped beating and all the blood in his body stood still.

Danny wanted to say he was surprised.

He wasn't. He'd known Matt was obsessed with her.

Danny wanted to say he wasn't hurt.

He was.

For a moment, he debated stomping over and demanding answers, demanding to know if Matt just used Danny to get in here. He even started to move, raising a fist-

-then realized his hand was already in a fist.

Danny didn't want to become _that guy_.

Hands shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the music or his bruised shoulder, Danny turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Screw Matt.

He'd go check on Jackson, make sure he hadn't died of whatever he OD'd on, then head home.

He didn't find Jackson - but near the main door, he did run into Stiles.

Literally.

"Have you seen Jackson?" Danny demanded, as he helped Stiles off the floor.

"Uh, hey, Danny!" Stiles said, his grin too big and far too bright. "What brings you here?"

Danny crossed his arms, unimpressed, and continued. "Erica and Isaac were dancing with him, then carried him out when he was barely conscious."

Stiles...paled. He looked nervous.

He looked _guilty_.

"If I find out you guys had anything to do with this," Danny said. "After you kidnapped him-"

"I did not drug Jackson!" Stiles answered immediately.

"...funny," Danny said, tilting his head. "I didn't actually say anything about drugs."

"I-" Stiles flailed.

Then turned and ran.

Danny shot after him, but for once, his muscles worked against him. Not only did he have trouble weaving through a crowd Stiles had no problem slithering through, but at least two girls tried to stop him to flirt with him. Even though Danny ignored them and ran past them, they still slowed him down.

Enough that by the time he was able to reach the doors, he lost sight of Stiles.

His only lead on Jackson, gone.

He took several deep breaths of the evening air, until his fists stopped clenching and his heart stopped racing. He turned towards the street over where his car was parked...

...only to hear gunfire.

It was instinct, more than anything else, to freeze at the sound. Danny had only ever heard it coming from TV screens and video games, but the sound was unmistakeable.

His next instinct was to go towards the sound.

~*~

Two months ago, the weirdest thing in Erica's life was her own brain spontaneously generating tiny electrical storms at the most inopportune moments imaginable.

Now, it was seeing Jackson burst through a wall like a particularly reptilian PowerPuff girl.

She looked at Isaac. "Do you think we could do that?"

Stiles scowled.

They went in the direction Jackson had gone, but lost him in the rave. With a frustrated grunt, Stiles stormed outside, and for lack of a better option, Erica and Isaac followed him.

Only so far, though.

A few steps outside, and Erica started to get that pins-and-needles feeling of a limb falling asleep. Only, instead of a single limb, it was an entire side of her body - the front, a bit to the right.

The side of her closest to the line of black dust on the ground.

One look at Isaac, and she knew she wasn't the only one. He crouched down and slowly reached out towards the line.

He couldn't reach it.

Stiles grinned. "It's working!" he whooped.

Erica wondered what's working and wondered if it would stop the kanima as well as it was stopping them-

They heard a howl - a howl of distress.

It wasn't any of them, and Boyd's howl sounded different, which meant-

"Break the line!" Derek snapped at Stiles.

"What-"

"Scott's in trouble," Isaac said.

Eyes wide, Stiles rang his fingers through the line of the black dust...only for it to stay right where it was.

"Stiles!" Derek snapped, heedless of Erica's dropped jaw and Isaac's wide eyes.

"I'm trying!" Stiles snapped back at him.

Stiles closed his eyes, waiting a moment, and reached out. This time, instead of touching the dust, he just waved his hands over the line.

This time, it broke.

She and Isaac both jerked as that pins and needles feeling abruptly vanished, and Derek bolted towards where the howl had come from.

~*~

Danny rounded the corner of the building, the sounds of the music and people from inside almost bowling him over. If he'd stayed in there a few minutes longer, he wouldn't have heard the gunfire.

Which meant he wouldn't have followed the sound, which meant he wouldn't have circled halfway around the building in confusion and desperation, which meant he wouldn't have seen Erica Reyes and Isaac Lahey helping a stumbling man carrying a half-conscious Scott out of a side room.

A stumbling man that Danny recognized.

"Miguel?" he muttered.

Danny had already figured out from the moment Stiles said the name that it wasn't real. But it was nice to have it confirmed when Stiles appeared, rushing towards them and yelling, "Scott? Derek!?"

"We have to go, now!" Isaac snapped at him.

"Where's your jeep?" Erica demanded.

Stiles led them away, gaze flitting across the ground, before the group disappeared around the other side of the building, towards the car lot.

Danny looked down, and frowned when he saw what looked like a line of black dust on the ground. He followed the line of dust.

He stopped when he reached a break in the line - not too far from where Danny had heard the gunfire. The line kept going, and Danny kept walking. He also pulled out his phone and opened up the browser, creating a new tab and typing in a search.

The search wasn't meant to get results right away. His main goal was to let the tab sit there and be a reminder for him to do some research when he got home.

But when he typed in _derek beacon hills_ , the first result that came up was a picture and a news article about Derek Hale. The picture was the man who Danny just saw being escorted away by Stiles and a pair of other teenagers.

Danny actually stopped to read incredulously, eyes narrowing as he stumbled across the arrest reports. Mapping his own meeting with the man to everything being said about Hale...

Stiles had been using Danny for a lot longer than he'd even realized.

Danny hadn't just tracked a text for a stupid classmate and his hot friend. He'd helped an honest-to-god _fugitive_.

Before Danny could read any further, though, there was a lot of screaming coming from inside the building. He looked up just in time to see the doors burst open and a panicked mob pour out of the rave.

"What the-"

He watched, stunned, as everyone fled, screaming about a _dead body_ and how there was _blood everywhere_ and oh god what if her killer is still here run run run-

Scowling, Danny jogged around the fleeing mob, over to the side entrance. There were people running out of that door, too, but a lot less of them. Danny was able to stand strong against the crowd and slowly move forward, until he was back inside the half-empty building.

The room that'd been pleasantly claustrophobic before, felt like a cavern as he looked around.

It didn't take him long to see what had everyone running.

Kara.

Or rather, Kara's dead body.

For a moment, he just stood there, staring at her open eyes and blank face and her ripped out throat.

It was one thing to know that people were dying in this town - again.

It was another thing to see the dead body of someone he'd talked to a day or two before.

He'd talked to her, he knew her, he bought tickets from her for local events all the time. He'd even talked to her that morning.

And now she was a corpse on the ground.

The room was still emptying out, and he hadn't even been the only person rooted there and staring in shock. Someone shoved at his shoulder, and that got Danny moving, back with the crowd, back outside, and back to his car.

This just went from an illegal rave to a murder, and Danny needed to get away from the crime scene before the cops showed up.

And he wasn't the only one.

"Danny!" Matt cried out from beside Danny's car. "Thank god, you're all right. What-"

"Kara's dead," Danny blurted out, reaching his car. Matt immediately wrapped an arm around Danny's shoulder. Despite the vivid memory of Matt dancing with Allison, Danny leaned into the touch. "The ticket girl, she - someone ripped her throat out."

Matt's eyes widened rather theatrically at that. "What? How?"

"I don't know!" Danny said. "I only saw the body, and even that was after everyone else started running away."

Tightening his sideways embrace, Matt wondered out loud, "What the hell happened, here?"

"I don't know, but whatever this is..." Danny frowned. "I think some of our classmates are in on it."

Matt frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Earlier, I saw Erica and Isaac dragging Jackson out of the rave, and he wasn't conscious. Just saw them again, doing the same thing with Scott, also not conscious, but with Stiles and..." He pulled out his phone, swiped in, and showed Matt the page he'd been reading. "Derek Hale."

Matt's eyebrows rose as he read down the page.

"And whatever this is? It's been going on for a while," Danny said. "A while back, I went to Stiles' place. I thought it was to study, but he made me track the origin IP of a text someone sent, and this guy was there. I didn't know who he was at the time, they said his name was Miguel." He jerked his head towards the phone. "But I just checked the dates, and this was when Hale was still wanted for the janitor's murder at the school." He swallowed. "Stiles was harboring a wanted fugitive in his room, and I helped them, somehow."

The last part, he spoke bitterly, and Matt squeezed Danny's shoulder in comfort.

"Do you know what happened to Scott and Jackson?" he asked.

Danny shook his head. "At first, I thought they took some E or something. The way Erica and Isaac were dancing with Jackson earlier, it'd make sense. But with all of this..."

Matt nodded. "We'll figure this out," he promised, handing Danny his phone back.

"And-" Danny pointed a bit over the building they'd just left. "I'd heard gunfire, a few minutes before people saw Kara's dead body. But she doesn't look like she was shot."

Matt's eyes widened. "You sure?"

"For a moment," Danny said. "I - didn't look too closely."

"I wouldn't," Matt agreed with an understanding nod.

With a shake of his head, Danny unlocked the car.

"The cops will get here any moment, and they'll be fanning out," Danny said, opening his driver's door. "We need to get out of here before they see us."

"Won't they see everyone on the security cameras, anyway?" Matt asked.

Danny shrugged. "Doubt it. This whole thing was supposed to be under the radar, right? They're smart, they probably cut the security cameras."

"You mean hack them?" Matt asked. "Can you do that?"

"You can, but it's easier to literally cut them," Danny said. "As in, cut the wires on the security camera so they stop recording. If you can do it from above or behind, you never even get seen."

Matt nodded. "Well, we might need to do that soon, if we want answers. With the school's new cameras?"

Danny snorted, and climbed into the car. "Not like those ever help."

"You okay to drive?" Matt asked.

Danny nodded. "I didn't drink or anything." Fighting the very, very strong urge to bite his lip, he said, "Need me to take you home?"

Shaking his head, Matt said, "No one expected to need to leave this fast, so not everyone stayed sober."

Danny smiled. "I've driven home drunk people in their own cars, before," he said. "I wish you all the luck."

"Thanks," Matt drawled. "I'll need it. See you at school?" Danny nodded. With a firm pat to Danny's shoulder, Matt shut Danny's door for him, but waited.

With a slight eyeroll, Danny started the car, and smoothly turned out of his spot and onto the street, rolling down his windows. "See!" he called out at Matt. "I'm fine!"

"Just making sure!" Matt yelled. He waved and jogged off. Danny started driving, but also looked for Matt in the rearview mirror.

Matt was headed back towards the building.

No, not the building - towards Allison, who was waiting by her own car.

The car that Matt climbed into.

The car that Matt climbed into on the _passenger side_ , no less.

Of course. Matt being nice to Danny paled in comparison to his minor obsession with Allison.

With a forlorn sigh, Danny started driving away, again.

Then slowed down again when he saw several, armed men who were definitely not police officers standing by the doors to the rave.

One of whom he recognized.

"Principal Argent?" he asked, bewildered. He watched as their high school principle handed a pretty big handgun to...was that Mr. Argent? Allison's dad?

Principal Argent knelt down, and held his hand over something. Squinting, Danny realized it was the black line of dust he'd been following earlier.

After a moment, Principal Argent pulled his hand away, like he'd been burned.

Danny almost turned around to park and spy on them, but he heard sirens in the distance. So did the men, who started scattering.

With a frustrated sigh, Danny tore out of there, barely making it off the corner before the cops appeared down the street.

He was ending this night with way more questions than he'd started with.

~*~

Officially, Noah Jonathan Stilinski was a civilian, now.

Unofficially, he'd been the Sheriff for eight years, and a cop for another six before that. He'd been elected Sheriff with little fanfare because few thought anyone else was better for the job. He'd done it well, up until this year, and most people respected him when he wore the badge.

It was only the kind of person they thought he was without the badge - the kind of father they thought he was - that cost him his job.

Even though John was no longer even a cop, let alone the Sheriff, none of the deputies challenged him or put up more than a token effort to stop him as he approached the crime scene.

Though it looked it wasn't just him. This wasn't the time for the District Attorney to be wandering around the crime scene, either, yet there was David Whittemore.

The man looked up when he saw the Sheriff approaching, and sighed.

"Stilinski, what are you doing here? You know-"

"I know," John said. "Though it's not like you're supposed to be here, either."

Whittemore grimaced. John pulled out the list of names from his pocket, and said, "I just need to see if...I just need to check."

He crouched down by the girl's body. Her raves were illegal, but the kind that deserved fines and a bit of county jail time, not - _this_.

Unfolding the list of names he and Stiles had compiled earlier, he said, "I need to know her name."

David hesitated, but answered, "Kara. Kara Simmons."

John looked down the list, and frowned.

"What?" David asked.

"She's not on the list," he muttered, and crumpled up the paper in his fist. "Damnit. Back to square one."

"You're supposed to be on square zero," David deadpanned. After a chuckle, he quipped, "You can take the man out of the Sheriff's office, but you can't take the Sheriff out of the man."

John smiled ruefully, and stood up.

"Well, you're not wrong about the office part," he said. "So I'll head out."

He turned and started to walk away, only for David Whittemore to call out, "Hey, Sheriff!"

Out of habit, he turned around. However, despite the fact the title no longer belonged to him, he was the one David had been addressing.

"After this," he said, waving his hand at the murder. "We should sit down and figure out what's really going on with our boys."

This man had effectively gotten him fired - but he seemed to regret it. He also seemed to see what John did: that there was something bigger than a prank gone wrong that their kids were involved with.

John nodded. "After this," he promised. Then he turned and walked out the door.

He wasn't the Sheriff, anymore.

He wasn't even a cop, anymore.

He didn't belong here, anymore.

~*~

Normally, Isaac hated being in the back seat with the windows open on a chilly-night like this.

But cold air blasting in his face was better than inhaling the remnants of wolfsbane from Scott and Derek's clothes.

In the front passenger seat, Derek - slumped against the door - hung up from his phone call to the vet.

"Deaton's meeting us at the clinic," he said, voice almost slurring.

"Thank god," Stiles said. Calling over his shoulder at Erica and Isaac as he took a sharp turn, he demanded, "How is he?"

"Still alive," Isaac deadpanned. "Barely."

"Really helpful!" Stiles snapped. "You're just so-"

"Stiles," Derek said, cutting him off.

Stiles subsided, grumbling about _stupid evil hunters_ and _goddamn possessed murder-puppet lizards_.

"We couldn't even stop that thing from killing someone," Erica said. "How the hell were we supposed to capture it?"

"Technically, we did," Stiles pointed out. "We just couldn't _contain_ it."

Erica growled at him.

Derek snarled back at her, and with a jerk of surprise, she quieted.

Still slumped against the door, Derek ordered Stiles, "If the cops find anything, keep us appraised."

Isaac blinked in surprise at the sudden change in Stiles' heartbeat. His breathing grew more tense, and he heard the creaking of the steering wheel even as he saw Stiles clench his fists.

"Well, it's not like I'll be able to know if they find anything," Stiles ground out. "Since my dad got fired because his son used police property to kidnap a classmate."

The Jeep was silent after that, save for the sound of Scott's labored breathing.

"...for what it's worth," Derek said. "I'm sorry."

"Like that helps," Stiles snarled.

But Stiles went quiet, splitting his attention between the road, and checking on Scott in the rear-view mirror.

From Scott's other side, Erica murmured, voice low enough that only werewolf hearing could pick it up, "We're going to fix this, right?"

Derek nodded once.

"...how?" Isaac asked.

This time, there was no answer.

Probably because Derek didn't have one.

~*~

An hour later, Scott was still unconscious on the table Deaton had him laid out on.

But his breathing was even and clean, even after Deaton pulled off the snout-sized oxygen mask.

Stiles sighed in relief, and behind him, Derek murmured, "Thank you."

At that, he turned around, looking at Derek in surprise.

"...wow," he said finally. "First an apology, and now a thank you?"

Derek glared at him. But he wasn't even moving because he didn't want to wake up Isaac and Erica, whose heads rested on his shoulders.

Instead, he looked between Stiles and Deaton.

"...Boyd was shot," he said finally. "I don't know what kind of bullet he took. I don't know where he went. I'm guessing he went home. He needs _help_."

Stiles nodded, pulling out his phone. "On it," he said.

He darted out of the exam room, around the front desk, and ducked into the tiny bathroom to the side. 

Inside, he called Allison.

"S-Stiles?" she answered.

Stiles blinked at the even-tinier mirror in surprise. "You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said, sounding like she wasn't.

"You're lying," Stiles said. "But right now, we have bigger problems, so I'll pretend I believe you."

A sniffle, like she'd been crying. "What bigger problems?" she asked.

"Boyd was shot," Stiles said. "And he disappeared after, but Derek thinks he went home. Can you check the ammo your mom's guys used tonight? And if any of them have wolfsbane, can you bring me a bullet?"

"I can do that," she said. "Usual meeting place in..." A moment, the faint sound of a door opening, then closing a moment later. "Forty minutes?"

"Yeah," Stiles agreed. "And if I don't make it, leave it right by the rock, but not on top of it."

"I'll use the chalk to mark it," she reported, then the line went dead.

With a frustrated sigh, Stiles pocketed the phone, then headed back out-

-and stalled at the sight of his guidance counselor and substitute Latin teacher sitting in one of the chairs of the little waiting room.

With a smile, the enigmatic teacher said, "Hello, Stiles."

"Uh, heeeyy, Ms. Morrell," Stiles said. He felt so, so confused, because- "It's way after hours-"

"I'm here to see my brother," she said, with that same, blank-faced look that made talking to her feel like talking to a tree.

(Trees didn't talk back, thankfully, which is what made talking to her so easy.)

"You mean Dr. Deaton?" he asked. She nodded, and Stiles blinked as he took in her appearance. Now that he thought of it, they did kind of look alike. "Oh, um, well, we were, uh..."

At that moment, Deaton appeared.

"Marin," he greeted. "What are you doing here?"

Ms. Morrell took a deep breath. "Trying to decide whether I admire your sentimentality, or despise it."

Stiles frowned in confusion, while Deaton's face seemed to harden with irritation.

"If I wanted your opinion, I would make an appointment with the guidance office," he said.

No, he _snarked_.

Stiles blinked at the equally-enigmatic veterinarian in surprise.

He didn't realize the man was even capable of sarcasm.

"From the state of things, I think you could use a little guidance," Ms. Morrell said. "Are you really going to leave all of this up to a couple of kids?"

Deaton shrugged, and pointed at Stiles. "Stiles made a mountain ash barrier, tonight, around an entire building - even after running out of it, and on his first try." Stiles' jaw dropped, but Deaton continued. "They're more capable than you think."

Morrell raised an eyebrow, neither of them appearing to notice Stiles' heart plummeting through the goddamn floor.

"Did he, now?" Morrell asked. She looked at Stiles. "Did it contain the kanima?"

Stiles was still gaping at her, so Deaton answered for him.

"It contained some werewolves," he said. "But Stiles had to break it before they had the opportunity to test it on the kanima."

"That's a shame," Morrell said.

Stiles pointed at her. "You- what- how?!"

He looked back and forth between them, before finally throwing his arms up in the air. "You know what? I give up. I don't care! I have bigger problems." He looked at Deaton. "While Scott was inhaling wolfsbane, Boyd was shot with a bullet full of it. I've gotta go deal with that."

Morrell's expression darkened. "Do you have the wolfsbane he was shot _with_?"

Stiles narrowed his eyes at her, but said, "I'm working on it." He turned towards Deaton. "Got any more of that ketamine? I don't think Boyd should be conscious for this."

Deaton seemed to think for a moment. "How are you feeling?"

"What?" Stiles asked. What the hell was Deaton getting at? "How am _I_ feeling?"

"He means," Morrell said. Stiles turned to look at her, just in time to catch an eyeroll. "How are you feeling after making that mountain ash barrier? And more importantly, do you feel up to doing that again?"

Stiles swallowed, staring at what he'd thought was just another high school teacher.

"...Yeah," he said, looking back and forth between the two mysterious people he was caught between. "I am."

Deaton accepted his answer with a single nod. "Wait here," he instructed, and went back to the exam room.

Swallowing, Stiles turned to Morrell. "So, uh - are you like Deaton?"

"Like him, how?" Morrell asked, with a blank smile. "Alan is a licensed veterinarian, and I am a part-time teacher and counselor."

"Yeah, but can you do magic like him?" Stiles asked.

"You made a mountain ash barrier, tonight," Morrell deflected. "Do you feel very magical, right now?"

"A little bit like a Jedi, yeah," Stiles said. Then, his eyes widened in realization. "Oh my god, are you guys like the Skywalker twins or something?"

It was hard to tell, but Morrell seemed more amused by his outburst than anything else.

Deaton came back out a moment later, handing him a syringe which was already full of something - a liquid with some kind of plant inside it.

"You don't need to put in as much effort with this valerian as you did with the mountain ash," Deaton said, putting it in some kind of protective, tubular casing that would keep it from leaking. "You aren't creating something from scratch - just using the valerian to help the ketamine along. But you will still need to be a spark-"

Morrell huffed in derision.

"-to work against a werewolf's natural metabolism to sedate Boyd," Deaton said, glaring sidelong at his sister.

Stiles nodded. "Use the Force to sedate a werewolf, got it."

Deaton looked like he was barely refraining from rolling his eyes. "You are not a Jedi, Stiles."

"...I can't believe you've seen Star Wars and Scott hasn't," Stiles grumbled. "But, uh, thanks."

He turned to Morrell, couldn't think of what to say, and instead gave her an awkward kind of wave as he headed out the door, checking his phone for any updates.

Half an hour later - and after ten minutes of waiting in the woods only a few blocks away from the Argent home - he got one.

He didn't even see Allison until she was less than a dozen yards away. Stiles would've yelped in surprise if he weren't so cold and shivering.

"H-H-Here," she said, holding out a single bullet with the Argent fleur on it in a thinly-gloved hand. "There were three different types of gun, and three different types of bullets. This was the only one with wolfsbane."

"Thanks," Stiles said, taking it and pocketing it. He narrowed his eyes at Allison. "And I know I said I'd pretend to believe you earlier, but what's wrong? Did something happen?"

"No!" Allison said. Stiles stared at her, and Allison sighed. "I know I was leading him on a bit, but I still liked Matt. He seemed nice."

Raising an eyebrow, Stiles asked, "'Seemed'?"

Her shoulders slumped. "I checked out his camera. He's stalking me."

Now both his eyebrows shot up. "Danny's going to be even more disappointed," he said.

Allison gave him a wet, humorless smile. "Even more than he already is?"

Stiles nodded, conceding her point. "Are you going to be okay?"

She shrugged, surprisingly non-chalant. "In the grand scheme of all the other problems in my life, a stalker is not that big of a problem." With a wan smile, she said, "I'll be talking to him at Lydia's party tomorrow night. Either he'll stop...or I'll _make_ him stop."

With a grin that Stiles hoped looked as predatory as he felt, he held up a fist. She bumped her own fist against it.

"If you need it, you know we'll have your back, right?"

Allison nodded. "Honestly, even seeing all the creepy pictures he had of me was still nothing compared to some of the stunts my family's pulled on me. At least he hasn't put a bag over my head, kidnapped me, and tied me to a chair in a basement. So he's already coming out ahead of my dad."

Stiles was probably going to hell for laughing at that, but he couldn't help it - it was true. "I gotta go," he said, still chuckling as he patting the pocket with the bullet in it. "But good luck, okay?"

Allison nodded. "When I text you asking if you made it home from the rave okay," she said. "I'll be expecting an update on Boyd and Scott."

Stiles nodded. "Scott's fine," he said, already answering half her question. As for the other half, which would be monitored by her family... "I'll let you know if I made it home smoothly, roughly, or...not at all."

With a single, tight hug, they parted ways, Allison to sneak back into her home while Stiles went off to track down the last werewolf for the night.

~*~

Boyd groaned awake to the smell of ash in the air, the throbbing of his abdominal muscles, and the sound of a hyperactive teenager sitting at the foot of his bed.

Damn, that magical ketamine hit hard.

"How long've I been out?" Boyd slurred out, patting his shirtless torso. Two little bumps where the normal bullets had hit him, and above them, a small hole where he'd been struck by the wolfsbane bullet.

"About two hours," Stiles murmured, looking between Boyd and the bedroom door. "Uh, the bottom two should be gone in a few hours. The top one may leave a bit of skin discoloration, but otherwise it should also disappear by tomorrow."

With a slow nod, Boyd pushed himself up. He stretched a few times, in a few different directions. Some twinges when he lifted his arms up, and throbbing when he held them out, but no pain besides those.

Stiles stared at him.

"Like what you see?" Boyd drawled.

Making a face, Stiles picked up the shirt that now had bullet holes in it and threw it at him.

Boyd pulled the shirt on, frowning when he realized Stiles was still glancing at the door.

"Relax," Boyd said, rolling his eyes. "As long as we keep quiet, no one will bother us."

"I know," Stiles said. "That's what bothers _me_."

Now Boyd was really confused. "Isn't no one barging in a good thing?"

Stiles clenched his jaw.

"...You were out for nearly two hours," Stiles said. "Your family sat down for a long, chatty dinner. Then your parents put your little brother and your sister to bed. And not once did anyone so much as knock on your door."

Stiles kept looking between the door and the boy in the bed.

"Is this why you took the Bite?" Stiles asked.

Boyd glared.

"Thank you for helping me," he ground out, hoping Stiles got the hint.

He didn't. Or he did, but ignored it. It was hard to tell with Stiles.

"Scott said that _you_ said you wanted to be a werewolf like him - rather than Derek."

For some reason, this was the moment Boyd remembered Stiles' dad was a cop. And Derek seemed to think Stiles was going to grow up to be a cop, too.

He was never going to let this go. Cops made their living by harassing people, and Stiles was no exception.

Better to give him something else to latch onto - and distract him.

"Why is Scott trying to do anything about the kanima?" Boyd asked.

Stiles looked at him like he was crazy. "Um, hello? Scary monster going around killing people-"

"Yeah," Boyd cut him off. "But not anyone _he_ cared about. And the kanima isn't his fault, either. It's not his problem, it doesn't have to be - but he's trying to do something about about it, anyway. Why?"

Now Stiles looked like he was appraising Boyd for a head injury.

"That is why," Boyd said. "Most people would say, 'not my problem' and peace out. I know I'm missing a lot about what happened around here before Derek Bit me, but I'm pretty sure that option never even occurred to Scott - or even you."

He got up and went to the window overlooking the bit of yard on the side of his house. Nudging aside the screen propped up against the wall beside it, he re-opened the window.

Pointedly, he looked back to Stiles. "But Derek is still my alpha. He found me and Erica and Isaac, the three kids who needed the Bite the most, needed a _pack_ the most, and gave that to us."

The open window was a big enough hint that Stiles didn't ignore it.

"Fine," Stiles said, getting up. "But don't forget that he didn't give you the Bite because you needed it. He only helped you because _he_ needed a pack, not because _you_ needed it."

Boyd felt his claws sink into his palms.

"You know why I want to be like Scott?" he demanded. "Because Derek needs someone like that in his pack...and if Scott won't do it, _I will_."

Stiles blinked in surprise.

"It's supposed to be a win-win situation for us," Boyd said. "Derek helped us, and we help him. I don't care 'why' he cares about us, as long as he does. Maybe he's going after the kanima for a different reason than Scott - but he's still doing it."

With a snort, Stiles shook his head as he stood up. "You already sound like Scott, you know that?"

That threw Boyd for a loop. He narrowed his eyes at Stiles as he perched on the window ledge.

"Derek's good at making people think they'll get what they want," Stiles said, turning his head to face Boyd. "He can do it without even lying, because a guy who grew up around werewolves knows better. He'll probably even try to get you what you want - but only because it keeps you on his side."

"He wants to help us," Boyd said. "And he's trying his best."

"...I know," Stiles muttered. "That's the problem." Boyd frowned in confusion, but Stiles already turned and slipped out his window. Boyd kept a careful eye on him as Stiles crawled down the trellis until he landed on top of the shed, then clambered down off of that. He heard the sound of the grass crunching under Stiles' feet, but he doubted anyone in his family heard anything.

Stiles started to head out towards the street, but then stopped and looked back up at Boyd.

Without raising his voice, Stiles said, "I hope you're right about Derek. But if he disappoints you as much as he disappointed Scott - _we_ could use another guy like you."

Then he turned and walked away.

Boyd snarled, but calmly replaced the screen in his window and closed it.

What the hell did they know about Derek, anyway?

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Concrit is ♥ - I mean it! I want this fic to be as good for you guys to read as it is for me to write. :)
> 
> Learn more about the series [here](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/tagged/everyone-has-a-story/chrono), see my ideas and inspirations for this series [here](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/tagged/ehas), and get some sneak previews for what's to come in this series [here](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/tagged/prehas).


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